


Reserata Carcerum: Part Three

by Natrix



Series: Reserata Carcerum [3]
Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: Beauty and the Beast Elements, Dread, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Erotica, F/F, F/M, Horror, Mystery, Psychological Horror, Rape/Non-con Elements, Romance, Sexy, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:02:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 41,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26711866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natrix/pseuds/Natrix
Summary: In conclusion to the Reserata Carcerum series:Sophie Harker, daughter of Jonathan Harker traded herself for her fathers freedom, believing both spirits could be saved.But time, especially within those cold stone walls with the enigmatic, seductive Count prove fickle and her own mind and desires more slippery than she first surmised.Having succumb Sophie believes she has nothing to lose.That is- until she comes to find that all is not as it seems.
Relationships: Dracula/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Reserata Carcerum [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1849231
Comments: 80
Kudos: 56





	1. A Dream- April 1897

**_Sophie Harker's_ ** **_Diary_ **

**_April 1897_ **

* * *

>   
> Like angels with wild beast's eyes,  
> I shall return to your bedroom  
> And silently glide toward you  
> With the shadows of the night; 
> 
> And, dark beauty, I shall give you  
> Kisses cold as the moon  
> And the caresses of a snake  
> That crawls around a grave.
> 
> When the livid morning comes,   
> You will find my place empty,  
> And it will be cold there till night.
> 
>   
> I wish to hold sway over  
> Your life and youth by fear,  
> As others do by tenderness.

\- _Charles Baudelaire_

_Le Fluer du mal_

* * *

I hear this sometimes, murmured by him as if by the shell of my ear. It hums at first as sweet as any song- a lullaby. But I cannot help but wonder if the humming is not really buzzing... and not a lullaby at all but something all together... different.

The dreams are always the same now, yet not.

He kisses me, pulls my dress free. I burn for him, in my neck my breasts and the crux between my thighs, they alight with a kind of cold ache for his kiss, all these places he’s kissed before he leaves the impression of his longing. 

I feel the snap of his entrance every time as if it was the first. Each are the first, yet familiar.

Tissue tearing free, the scream of silk

A question answered.

These are my dreams, sometimes upon cold stone, or by light of warm fire but always I am torn and kissed and burn.

Always there is a question answered.

When I taste it- I wake suddenly, violently alone in tangled damp sheets which smell sweetly of myself and of he. 

I forget so quickly these visions until I am left with only the sweet unsatisfied cramp and not knowing how I might yet be so aroused and yet so filled with dread, as if a shadow stretches and I cannot bear to stare long in its depths- though I feel how it reaches for me at each night when my eyes close.

The Gypsies. They are here.

I watch them, but they have not yet seen me.

At first I feared they might,

now I fear they cannot.

For what if I am dead?


	2. April 18th 1897

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophie discovers all is not as it seems. . .

**_Sophie Harker's Diary_ **

~~**_April 18th 1897_ ** ~~

* * *

I felt like a ghost watching from the shade. It did not help that I had yet to escape the languor which seemed to have followed me from sleep and the dreams which had possessed me and that I no longer remembered. 

It took me some time to find a better vantage point in which to observe them. 

I almost lost myself in the musky rooms, my head swirling as the dust motes I stirred from the musk, the dust motes swirling as I broke within only to hold my own breath daring to listen and attempt to spy them from the window.

Then there they were. Carriages pulled by sleek dark horses. The counts own, free in the fields cried and tossed his head in greeting and ran alongside the fence line. The horizon seemed filled with them coming out of the shadowed trees. It had been a long time too since I had truly had such a vantage point.

The snow was gone, and in place the rains had brought lush and verdant green. The day was not grey but blue, such a sweet clear blue and though I couldn't feel the warmth from the castle which was suspended in a kind of purgatory of shade, but I could smell it. It smelled like spring- spring burgeoning to summer- but that was not possible, yet _it looked like spring_ with verdant green and blues and the swaying of grass thick in fields. I always thought that in such mountain heights spring came later, but here for some strange reason it seemed to be coming early, a mockery to all the death so near. I listened and watched and watched and listened and heard their drifting strange voices, and saw their broad hats and dusky skin, flashes of silks and some shining silver which winked in the light. 

In the courtyard below they circled their caravans, and made themselves busy with the making of their encampment and standing there as I observed them I was overcome with Baudelaire’s gloaming prose.

> _In the mournful vaults of fathomless gloom_
> 
> _To which fate has already banished me,_
> 
> _Where a bright rosy beam never enters;_
> 
> _Where, alone the night, that sullen hostess,_

I watched and listened so long I forgot myself that I was not a spirit.

I did not realize at first that I had been seen until others began looking up, stopping their working and then I saw **her** \- her head tipped up, face wrinkled with so many lines I couldn’t even make out the eyes. Just the mouth, dimpled and stretching as she looked up and pointed.

Pointed at me. 

Like a beast startled by its own reflection I escaped from their lingering sight, the beat within my breast a pained flurry.

I dared not return to the window then, instead I listened and sitting below the still on the cold stone I could smell still the warmth of sunshine, and soon I could smell wood smoke.

* * *

I sat so long and listened so long that I must have nodded off, for the next I was aware that I blinked to darkness and chill evening air with some distant primal glow licking and swaying upon the castle walls like feral dancers. The whisper of his cloak too I began to know well.

“You’ll grow dusty sitting like that.” He commented wryly coming to stoop beside me and reaching to caress my face so I might look at him which I obliged and through his look I saw he was not displeased with whatever he found there. “How are you feeling?”

“Perhaps a little stiff-” I was quite so, for he helped me rise and my body made several complaint including letting me know I was quite hungry as well. “And hungry- but otherwise.” 

“Then you will be greatly pleased- join me?” He asked and offered his arm. 

_Are we to meet them? Already?_ I thought even as I took his arm the thought made me wish to dig my heels in suddenly to resist. The sight of them rose up in my minds eye, pointing staring- not simply as they had below but up close so that I might see the revulsion and horror in their eyes.

He must have felt the hesitation in my step for he increased his pull in accordance and eyed me.

“Something the matter?”

“I only- I’m not sure if I’m quite ready?”

“For dinner? Now that would be a pity.” 

I might have laughed and he too looked amused.

“Too… meet them. It- it only seems so soon.”

“Does it?” He asked, airily, in a way that made me feel as if he was making a kind of note in his own mind about something. About me.

It made me uneasy and I disliked that, his inflection seeming to infer an awareness to something I may lack. It tickled like spiders legs at the back of my throat and upon my neck. An irritation, but the kind that was a companion to dread.

But I digressed. “It's only that it’s been so long I fear I’ve forgotten what it's like.”

“To see people?” He suggested.

“No, to be **seen** by people.” I emphasized.

“I see you.” 

I spoke to my dustied slippered feet. “Yet I am not the same creature I once was. If they meet me will they see Sophie Harker as I knew myself to be or-?”

“Now _there’s_ a presumption.” He hums quite coyly

“Oh?” I inquired, uncertain if I was fishing for reassurance or the truth and wondering which he’d provide. 

Our steps provided hollow echoes of companionship following us like disjointed out of friends eager to follow. It was some walk to my rooms which I had travelled so often now I often phased out as I paced along the corridors. I’d grown leaner I think here with so much walking, I was becoming sharper of hip, and of elbow. I felt sometimes my the ridge of my collar bone thoughtfully as I one touched upon that cross at my throat and can’t help but wonder if bones might not split through skin which grows too tight.

I suppose it might.

“You speak as if you fear a kind of mutation might be taking place.” 

_mutilation_.

Had I insulted him? I cannot tell if he is easy or difficult to wound, but here at least he had an even minded look to him, a thoughtful look under that dark brow. 

I realized oddly then as I looked at him I was allowed to touch his face, that between us now there was such an intimacy that I might touch him whenever I’d like to

In fact I might even strip off my clothing there and walk naked and shirk all concepts of propriety. It was a silly, half mad yet possessive thought that nearly distracted me from what he said, speaking with his head tipped just so, like that of a great carrion vulture those dark twin pricks of interest under heavy brow.

“There is a difference between mutating, and _revealing_.” He continued. “The first infers a kind of infection, the second merely a removal of veils.” Something in me desired to resist these words, my brow knitting like a snagged pieces of lace before he finished his eyes raising to mine thoughtfully as he concluded. “What makes you so sure Sophie Harker you aren’t simply becoming more yourself than you’ve ever been?”

“Well I-” Perhaps while my bones grew shaper I grew duller. I disliked this argument, though I could not at first see why, “That would put you in a desirable light wouldn’t it if that were the case, which is likely enough to make me suspect it as a falsehood.”

He laughed and this too echoed like our steps, replaying the sharpest notes, a kind of fading like after fireworks where the image lingered but with sound instead of light.

“Well I can claim to be a little _self serving_ at times. I admit.” He said, chortling a little at my frankness and suspicion. When he laughed it made one feel quite good about oneself, because he always took the expression of being quite surprised by it, and in that laugh you were complimented and delighted by yourself really for having accomplished such a feat. “Now get dressed and meet me downstairs, I have something of a surprise.”

* * *

So we parted and I have found a new dress Upon my bed and though I am terribly hungry I’ve taken the time to sit and write out my thoughts as I might still be fresh. 

I can’t help but wonder each time I sit at this little desk, in this dark place which will be my last time.

As I write my window is open and I smell the wood smoke even from here. It reminds me of my visitor until I remember that I opened it myself in the morning and have not heard or seen her since. I wonder again if I should not explore that thread left by father but I am hesitant. What if anything might it change? 

There is an element of trepidation in this place which is so constant that it has become to me a white noise- but precedes as a sort of _anxiety_ which I have long grown accustomed to. Although it re-emerges as it might now when I so choose to look at it closely.

Yes I might go explore the depths of the castle as my father did.

But where did that get him? Wherever he may be I cannot imagine the nightmares would leave him. I wonder with some pain if my kindness had only truly been a gift of madness. . . But that I cannot bear to think of long, but rather my observation is simply that often with fear the remedy is to face it- when a child fears the monster beneath the bed it is common to excavate the territory thoroughly and arrive to the conclusion that there are no such things. It is the common idea that the dread is worse than the fear itself.

But that is not true of this place.

Here the terror is the growing awareness. . . it's _knowing_ that seeing will be worse.

It’s trying _not_ to look.

I am almost grateful now for the lack of mirrors.

Veil he said. A bridal veil being ripped away.

I’d like to say that who I am is unrecognizable but without a mirror how am I to say? When I skim through pages written they seem to be written by a hand of a ghost. I had taken some ease in thinking myself being quite helpless, _mutated_ perhaps as he suggested by forces outside my realm, a flower doomed to wither by the coming of winter.

Perhaps my denial is not at the truth in his suggestion but in accepting that he might be right.

I think of my bones again, pushing up out of my skin. Splitting through and wonder how many layers I might have left for him to peel away. Will bones be more ‘me’ somehow less constrained than they were by flesh?

I’m going down now to dinner, I do hope it's something hearty.

* * *

It was papanasi. 

I cannot say my immediate response was any kind of disappointment.

“Are you looking to spoil me or merely to fatten me up?” I asked at the flourish of this reveal.

“You are getting lean, but no, today is the _eve_ of a special day I thought to let it be marked.” Before I might enquire to those from his jacket he withdrew a letter and my stomach dropped at the sight of the spindly writing upon it. I reached for it so ardently it was only when he resisted- my bruising the envelope that I realized. “I fought with myself on this, Sophie you won’t make me regret it I hope.”

I felt almost dizzy, I wonder now that I had not entered a state of surreal shock, my fingers felt like ice and I shook violently when he released the envelope.

The seal was broken open without an attempt to disguise that fact.

The pages were scented with her favorite fragrance of geranium and in a delicate scrawl the letter began.

> _In hopes of reaching my dearest friend_

It was not this which arrested me. To see with such tenderness of affection this sentiment finally reaching me, but rather the date which followed:

> **_April 19th 1897_ **

The words at first blurred quickly and I realized I was weeping though I had not felt the tears begin.

_**April 19th!** _

* * *

Even now I have travelled back through my pages and these dates seem ever an enigma to me. Where and whence was the time lost and how was it spent? This and more I felt with the heaviest of dread as I sat there staring at a letter from my future and realizing for its date I was further ahead than even I realized.

April 19th as of her writing... My god I say sometimes to myself. But these words are hollow now, yet I say them still sometimes.

* * *

“Perhaps I should have waited until after so you might have enjoyed your meal-”

Unmoored as I was then I was brought back a little by his speaking, had he not I may have stared at the blurred words breathless until I became purple. Instead I half withdrew a breath and blinked, attempting to clear the blur from my eyes.

He believed my perturbation came only from my bond to Lucy so stoked and yes, though it was an initial shock I was unmoored not by my sentimentality but by invaluable dread and confusion and with a lack of capacity to begin to find stability or footing.

I suppose I might have simply asked him:

_What day is it?_

Only I realized then at that moment exactly when I was as I stared at the papanasi, piled high.

High as a birthday cake.

> _‘The eve of a special day’_

He'd said, the eve of my birthday?

 **April 29th 1897**.

As of writing this it must truly be the day. That is: My eighteenth birthday.

As of now I have come to realize I know far less about myself than I ever thought.

But how can I really know if it was yesterday at all?

I’ve lost seven days.

By the time of my recording of this how am I to know how much more has been lost? 

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello Lovlies :)  
> I've missed you all dearly I hope you enjoy moshing on this next bit. Goodies next chapter as good as an Papanasi ;)


	3. April 29th 1897

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dracula shares Lucy's Letter to Sophie.

**_Sophie Harker's Diary_ **

**_April 29th 1897_ **

* * *

_I resume as it was then._

* * *

“Sophie?” He asked. I had been sitting weeping without the ability to read the letter and staring at it through a blur of tears as my mind whirled and spun when he reminded me of his existence.

My time thief.

I asked him once before the date, after the baby… Perhaps he’d lied? The urge to ask for some clarity choked me. 

Suddenly I recalled the way he responded when I said it was too soon to meet the gypsies. _How long had they been here?_

“C-can you read it to me? Please?”

“Only if you’ll eat something. It’s not _my_ recipe but I’ve been told it’s quite good.” He responded and served me deftly with a cake knife, smearing the icing and glaze lewdly on the side of the plate. The scent of it made me dizzy and my stomach rolled a little despite the ache at the back of my throat. 

Then he plucked up the letter and dragging a chair near seated himself, assuming a comfortable position leaning his torso, and his arm upon the table, using his arm to support his head as he stretched across it, his face half shielded by the pink scented sheaf of paper. It was not a small letter the letter had bulged nearly out of the envelope and the pages were a thick sheaf.

He began in his clipped baritone.

* * *

_"-In hopes of reaching my dearest friend- Sophie Harker"_

* * *

He did not state the date, but instead continued. Intentional or irrelevant?

* * *

_  
"-I write in hopes of reaching you after hearing nothing for so long. I fought with myself whether or not to send you anything knowing that it would likely never reach you my darling- but if it does you will likely have already reached the mark of your birth year. The first of which we have not shared-_

_I have read and re-read your last letter so many times it has begun to fall apart in my hands! There are days where I delight, or cry inconsolably at what you left me there. I have written you in between almost every day and never sent them._

_Today however finally I have taken the courage to, despite your last letter being left uncertain as to your whereabouts or whom specifically your mysterious gentlemen is it is my instinct to address my letter to the place I knew you last stayed. Will it reach you? Or does some stranger read and amuse themselves laughing at my despair and eager to read the gossip of the English?_

_But all of this is only a waste of paper. It will either reach you, or it will not, and it is not exactly courage for myself that I have found the strength to make the attempt but because of the news I have only recently heard- and news otherwise I so need to share to someone._

_Miss Mina has left us you know Sophie? She’s travelled to meet with your father whose has apparently fallen very ill. You were not with him, and I dared not share the contents of your letter with any for fear of how it might be beheld by our society. I would never do that to you my friend, no matter how we might have enjoyed such gossip together. Betraying you would be like betraying myself, you are more than a sister to me- did we not joke that once married we might still be able to claim for many years to have slept in each others arms more than our husbands?_

_It is to be your fathers fiancé Mina goes, but I fear that news of this will never reach you should I not put the pen to pad myself and tell you. If he is ill Sophie you must go to him! If some bond has been broken it must be mended. For our tear you know can and will be forgiven for you know me too well, passion is the only excuse I might accept for you; passion being my only ruler and so the only I might not begrudge you to be sworn to-"_

* * *

My father. This information was as a noose snapping tight about my neck, I was surprised the crack wasn’t audible and he paused as if allowing this to sink in.

“You haven’t eaten.” He mentioned. “Shall I pause?”

Though my mouth was closed as if with glue I shook my head. 

“No, please-” I said and forcing my head clear, a difficult task- I took a long drink of cool water he’d provided turned my mouth slippery as if all my saliva had gummed up and as if to make a point I stabbed sawed a donut in half with my forks edge and brought it to my lips.

Crusty sugar and sweet sticky sauce met my lips and only once beyond those gates did he continue.

“Alright- where were we-ah-”

* * *

-“ _That my dear is the second reason, and the more selfish one that I write to you for. It seems melancholy suits me better than mirth, for it has inspired the devotions of not one proposal but three in one day if you can believe it."_

* * *

I laughed, half having swallowed the donut which I required another sip of water to get down. I laughed and a fresh well of tears beamed up as I forced myself to swallow and take another bite as the sour cream felt like a stab in my guts.

* * *

_  
"-I’m sure you can suspect at least two of admirers._

_The all to amiable Doctor whom you I am sure know came after lunch._ _He spoke to me Sophie very straightforwardly. He told me how dear I was to him, though he had known me so little and what it would be with me to help and cheer him. He was going to tell me how unhappy he would be if I did not care for him but I began to cry!_

 _Not simply for his sake, although I admit I was effected, but it was only this day that I had heard from father that Mina was leaving and all those terrible details about your fathers apparent illness and knowing all the while it was likely for us never to be reunited._ _At my tears he felt quite the brute and told me he did not desire to add to my present trouble. Then he broke off and asked if I could love him in time and when I shook my head his hands trembled and then with some hesitation he asked me if I cared already for someone else._

_Well Sophie I felt a sort of duty to tell him there was and had been for quite awhile. He was very grave, the poor man- he took both his hands in mine and said he hoped I would be happy and that if I ever wanted a friend I must count on him as one of my best._

_It’s a nice idea to be proposed to Sophie, and I suppose it is my just desserts to have been such a flirt for so long that it was high time to see the effect of such sentiments being scorned thoroughly. It is no fun watching a good man going away all broken hearted after he admits to loving you honestly._ _And that was only number one!_

_The second was no more expected than the first._

_You know the American from Texas. I might have felt guilty here if you had been present because you know I had such high hopes for the two of you. But with those plans left unrealized I found myself now the target of his affections. And he said to me in that darling American slang ‘Won’t you just hitch up alongside of me and let us go down the long road together, driving in double harness?’_ _Well Sophie I had to tell him that I did not know anything of hitching and that I wasn’t broken to harness at all yet._

_Though I admit that I couldn’t help but feel a sort of exultation that he was the second suitor in this day and before I could say a word he began pouring out a perfect torrent of love making, laying his very heart and soul at my feet and you know he must have seen something in my face which checked him for he stopped and said with a sort of manly fervor which I could have loved him for if I had felt free to-_

_“Lucy, you are an honest hearted girl I know. I should not be here speaking to you as I am now if I did not believe you clean grit- tell me like one good fellow to another is there anyone else that you care for?”_

_I wonder my dear Sophie that men can be so noble when we women are so little worthy of them. Here I was almost making fun of this great hearted true gentleman, and I nearly burst into tears again! Really I felt very badly, If only they’d let a girl marry three or as many as she wanted and save her all of the trouble so that even if she wasn’t ‘free’ of sentiments she might be free of body as she so chose?_

_Blasphemy of course._

_He accepted my rejection and my frankness with that equally frank American way of his and was on his way after leaving me too with the promise of friendship._

_The third I suspect my dear will surprise you as the other two might not have. It surprised me I admit. For he’s been a longstanding friend to both of us and it was this proposal Sophie I finally accepted- a certain golden haired boy we both know.-"_

* * *

“That can’t be right!” I exclaimed between bites, I had been continuously eating since he’d started up, and though I wasn’t quite satisfied I hadn't until then recognized how much I had consumed. But it was this declaration which had really stopped me short of disbelief for I really knew of only one _golden haired boy._

“Why’s that?” Dracula asked was looking at me quite curiously, for I suppose he felt somewhat out of the loop at why this might be such a shock to me. Very suddenly I felt as if I might as well be straight back at home, another girl in a softer body far far away laughing behind closed lips and kicking Lucy under the table scandalized.

I blinked, instead at another table, although with a partner whom I suspected would be all too pleased to play footsie with me but who was unmoored from the gossip I knew so well.

“Well that can only be Artie and Artie has never been quite…”It was strange to say aloud that which was only inferred and never spoken of sincerely although it was regarded to be quite… obvious by those closest to him- it was stranger still to be speaking about something of such a nature to _him_ of all people who It had not occurred to me to be aware of his sentiments of such things. I would wonder if his reaction would be disgust and how ironic that might be considering the nature of his own depravity. 

However I seemed not to need to say anything at all, perhaps he inferred it from my long awkward pause for his brows rose briefly and he said simply.

“Ah I see, well then it rather _does_ make some sense really,” I wondered how that might be possible and opened my mouth to ask when he held up a finger asking for silence while he continued.

* * *

_  
-"Our mutual friend has been keeping me some company upon the estate, which as we grew up so close I thought very little of, I suspect he knew of my pain though I did not explicitly share our last discourse he was aware that it seemed as if you may not be returning from your travels. So I was quite surprised to be handed a small letter requesting a private interlude between us beneath the wisteria (you know the ones Sophie, I feared you’d have sheared them if you’d seen them spring up again!). Of course in breaking decorum I found myself there after supper having made the excuses of reading before bed and there he made his proposal._

_It sounds romantic I suppose. Beneath the Wisteria on an evening. I wish I could say I threw my arms around him and kissed him but be both know Artie would have reddened like a squashed tomato and such affections should i have desired to expend them would have been far more cherished by my previous two suitors._

_Yet it was a more meaningful proposal than I’d ever heard Sophie because within it I was promised that which has never left my mind after reading your letter and has plagued me each day since. That I must endeavor to keep myself free and unchained…_

_We see in some way marriage as just that. Only it's not true is it? Yes if we are lucky to find an advantageous arrangement we might have our own house to run as we like -as long as its run to the norms of your circle lest you be branded and excised, if we ‘are lucky’ our suitors are generous and decent lovers and providers and not cruel or callous brutes._

_If we are lucky Sophie. That’s the hope of a woman's lot. To be lucky._

_And finally once we are married and_ **_only_** _when we are married are we free to be unchaperoned, to go where one desires and to not be plagued or whispered about for only once you are ‘bridled’ as my dear Texan put it are we allowed the presumption of ‘freedom’_

_Better in many ways of a women these days to be a widow than a wife, ha! See my dear how calloused I’ve become since your departure!_

_Within the day I had turned down two suitors and their passion. Under the wisteria was a different kind of passion offered to me._

_You see he knew about my rejections, being something of a friend to each man, of course you know he is the one who even introduced us to the Texan the two of which were as thick as thieves I suspect having experienced more of each other on those long American nights than would ever been admitted to in the light of the cold English mornings._

_He said to me:_

_Lucy we are two bright dandies in a flock of grouse, together we might blend in, but apart we risk being plucked or made dull by the very society which might at once admire us and envy us. My family desires an advantageous marriage as yours does and between us I cannot imagine one better for the other than ourselves simply for the reason that neither of us would trap the other, we know each other too well I think. Had you accepted one of the others, those men being some of the best most ardently passionate of you that I know, I would not have dared speak to you here in terms so frankly as I do now. If you will not consider yourself willing to tie yourself Lucy to a bond which might mean freedom for each of us?_

_So you see I suppose I did succumb to passion Sophie, as per usual_ **_my own_** _, rather than any other. After all birds of a feather ought to flock together might they not?_

_Soon my dear I will be married._

_If you receive this know that you are welcome and may find a home wherever I might call mine. Know Sophie above all you will never be too fallen to reach my graces._

_Your ever ardent, and adoring -"_

* * *

"Stop!" It was of course too late. I'd heard more than I might have born and did not beg soon enough.

* * *

"- _Lucy Margaret Westenra_."

* * *

He laid the letter down. Perhaps he observed me, I know not because I felt for a moment a kind of blindness in myself as if my eyes were closed, and yet they were open I know.

The silence left rang with the echoing absence which had grown in my breast.

Finally as if to spare me the discomfort he began, "She's a clever girl you Lucy. . . You were very close weren't you?" 

There was an inference there and one that made me shy away as one keeps away from the closet in the dark. There were things locked away even from myself which sat for so long my hesitation was instinctual, my denial more natural then the truth. Perhaps he could see that for he did not press anything except his hand over mine. His grip was strong and he ran the soft pad of his thumb across the mountainous range of my knuckles.

"What might I do to cheer you?" He asked and my head full of Lucy unable to shake the feelings I desired more than anything to be distracted, and this was exactly without guise I requested tremulously.

"Distract me."

He sat a little straighter at this, his mouth twitching keenly as he leaned in so that already it was easier to resist the inwards pull as my flesh prickled faintly .

"Oh? How might I do that?"

"If I had the capacity to answer you I might not need one." I said smartly causing a chuckle.

"Your lucky I find your cheekiness amusing. So then, how shall I proceed?"

At this interval he stood and with my hand in his, snapped me up so violently that I jarred against his chest my breath leaving me in a gust.

There was a clattering of dishes as suddenly room was made for me there, seated abruptly as any fine meal might and like a dish unveiled my garments were promptly torn.

"You know I rather suspect you should simply stop wearing these. Replacing them is costing a fortune."

I felt the low lurch of arousal at this, blotting like spilled ink the words which had sunk into my mind and flesh like talons. I was now quickening at the thought of him sinking into me, dizzy and silly with the delight.

"How lucky for me you're **disgustingly** rich."

' _Lucky'_ Lucy had said and I shivered.

"Is that all pretty girls think about?" He teased hands kneading up the flesh of my thighs as if testing the quality, squeezing and seeking and sending surges of anticipation like throbs in my belly.

"No more defensible than the desires of men." I challenged.

He rendered apart the corset to free my still laden breasts at that. "Ah but infinitely more distracting wouldn't you say?" As he stooped to enjoy himself, his fingers- two of them pushed aside any lingering fabric and seeking that place growing ever more familiar to him, he slipped them home where I’d grown slick and hot already. 

His fingers curled. Pumping inside me the heel of his palm drove up hard in such a way I could squirm and rock to increase my pleasure.

But this I found was not enough. My own desire out pacing my patience. My own rhythm only maddening me so I clung and bucked until I was half screaming in frustration and feeling my slickness increasing as lewd noises wetting and soaking even down buttocks.

“ _Please, Please._ ” This delighted him, bringing about a low growl and a momentary change of attention between my breast and his suckling of the second so hard it sent a burning ache soaring through me stinging like needles, which I would have gladly driven deeper as I begged his fingers too. The headiness of this pain adding a dizzying rush.

“ _More, more_.”

His response was nothing less than violent. I was struck down by my throat to the table. My skull singing as it struck in a song only I might hear. I caught sight only for the briefest moment of the savage focus on his face, the slight twitching curl to his lip before I was crudely flipped.

The pressure brought a blooming ache to the bones of my jutting hips which bruised the tender flesh. A yelp was drawn from my lips and fresh stinging tears in my eyes at this unpleasant agony which faded as quickly as it bloomed. My dress shoved up high to my hips, this position new and making me feel vulnerable, adding fresh delight and shock as he kicked my legs apart and with a jerk penetrated me. I was so wet I felt myself sopping down the near fabric of my dress and heard the wet slickness by the joining of our flesh. 

He was thick and exceedingly pleasing in this position which brought altogether intense pleasure, which was all the more brought to higher sensation being thus abused. I enjoyed not only my penetration by him but the added texture of the profane slapping of our bodies meeting, at each peak of his thrust to feel the slapping tickling conclusive thwack, of a thus unexplored aspect of his genitalia.

It was lewd, so rhythmically profane and bestial I felt wild in my own delight. My nails scouring the table, my hind lifting to offer myself to be taken deeper and more savagely until my back ached at the small of it and I could not help but spread myself further as if he might rend me deeper.

" **Sophie**."

His noise was half ragged half purr, a deep burled rumble made through clenched teeth each surge of him bringing that satisfying slap to my swollen aching seat.

I knew what he desired. Experimenting with clenching my legs and places I might not need to name, and delighting myself in the feeling, rewarded by a deeper thrust. I wanted more, not for it to end though I already began aching.

_Sophie!_

“No!”

I snarled stubborn. Childishly. And at this my hair was suddenly caught up a bright pain that was followed by the erratic thrust which knocked again my hips unkindly into the table edge. I grasped his hands seeking perhaps by instinct to free his grip, as my neck strained back. 

My body bowed up drawn by his pulling, a strength unable to deny and he obliged my desperate grabbing by adjusting his own grip from my hair to my throat. His hand so large it felt it engulf the exposed flesh and my own surge of life thrum against him.

"Look at me." His will coursed through me, unmistakable in the wake of my own snarling petulance. My body bowed his other hand securing my hip and then descending below, separating my hips from the tables edge his hand a barrier as it plunged groping into the thick curls of my mound which was soaked and practically dripping.

My eyes rolled open. His hand at my throat squeezed such that my legs quaked, though perhaps that was the hand buried in my thighs which he then pinched and rolled between his fingers., Still thrusting still driving.

My vision blurred and horrifyingly I became aware of an immense urge building as if to relieve myself and for a moment I was caught gasping, shame and fear of embarrassment sending me resisting. But his eyes caught mine and I was caught by the next more rolling deep motion of his hands. I felt ready to burst as he thrust and clenched my vision so blurred my back burning held in such and arch. I only saw the vague darkness of his eyes.

‘ _Don't resist,_ ’

I feared I could break my own spine he had me twisted as such should I disobey and clench. I felt a sudden kind of gush, flooding from me a kind of surging full body release sucking and expelling.

His hand twined again to my hair, I fear I brayed, like a beast yowling as he twisted me to meet his own pleasure contorting me till I felt ready to split, still surging as if I might be pissing myself as he began spilling he made a feral noise, like one of keen agony and slammed me to the table.

My teeth split my lip filling my mouth with the coppery tang.

I felt his hunger, was dizzy with my own. Though so raw then I felt bewildered when suddenly I felt him leave me, cool air cloying for a moment before being once again met on exceedingly intimate terms.

I yelped. Again jerked to the table and wincing, certain my hip was bearing through my flesh as the cruel wood met me and refused to yield.

His face buried into me from behind. Sucking and scouring as ardently he ever supped from me.

What shocked me was the sudden penetration of his tongue for the improbable sensation of it entering me. It seemed somehow larger and thicker, if not as well like a more dexterous member surging into me, stretching me stroking and rolling as if he might be a dog licking a bowl clean.

I doubt even the finest china felt then as I did.

His hand returned to my mound and began again coaxing. But it was too recent, too raw and I whimpered. Thighs squeezed shut only feeling them clamp around his cheeks. It stung, and I squirmed again.

_Please it's too much._

I begged though he pressed on sucking and rolling, the pain crested then from the depths of it came the beginnings of another. It was like he demanded the last drop. He worked me **sucking** and laving until _that_ feeling returned again, that urge to 'release'. I knew now not to clench to with hold, though I was raw my euphoria swelled again like the names which head made pain my darling companion, I began pressing back eagerly to his hungry mouth, this time as I fed that seismic flood and was rewarded with a flood of dizziness which came so strongly through the euphoria and a pressure on my temples as if having been wrung dry I was a crushed husk, milked and trembling.

* * *

My head throbbed as terrible as being plagued by the bluest of blue devils. Like a vice clamped, eager to have squeezed me thoroughly. I was a boneless fish that slid helplessly to the floor with a whimper.

I was exceedingly surprised to realize I had not in fact urinated at all and laughed weakly.

“I could just eat you up.” He growled pulling me so that I rolled and I found myself in his arms, but the pain was becoming quite strong then and it was difficult to enjoy him as he coaxed my mouth to his kissing and sucking the drying blood at my lips. 

It stung with fresh numbness. I invited him further, his tongue so cool and sweet to mine. He tasted of my musk our entwined arousal, a little of damp flour strangely though without the grit and a kind of sweetness and metallic vitality that is impossible to describe. 

“Eighteen.” My pain was ebbing, like a cool hand drawn over my forehead. I felt his presence not without my body but **within** and sighed as I felt him pushing away those discomforts, like detangling lace from a blackberry bramble eager to tear, he unhooked each snag with gentle fingers separating me from it. 

I realized he’d spoken after another moment that hum, reaching me like an echo. 

“Eighteen. Is it enough Sophie?” His lips were dewy with my fluids, gleaming. 

“Is it ever enough?” I echoed.

“No. Never.” I enjoyed the feeling of being enclosed by his arms. My heart seemed strong enough to resonate through the both of us. I’d forgotten about the letter, about Lucy. 

“Mmm hmm.”

“What might I give you today Sophie?”

“Today.” I replied, liking that idea, this was my answer you see though he did not quite understand it as such.

“Yes, **today**.” He confirmed as if thinking I might have asked a question.

“No, today, stay with me today. Won’t you?”

He grew so still that I was reminded of his ‘adjacency’ to life.

“Today.” He repeated.

“I wish I might go outside but I know. . .” I knew he could not but even as I said it despite my exhaustion I was stirred, aching a little with longing which brought stinging fresh to my eyes, surprising me I might long so acutely for something.

“Sleep now.” He said, but it was not a gentle suggestion, that hand that had passed like a cool cloth pressed against my feverish head seemed to slip in a motion as one might to push one beneath the surface, as the minister might push you beneath the water. Beneath was the moment one held their breath.

And it was a kind of oblivion.


	4. Letter from Lucy in full

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The full letter from Lucy,  
> enclosed.

_**April 19th 1897** _

_In hopes of reaching my dearest friend- Sophie Harker_

* * *

I write in hopes of reaching you after hearing nothing for so long. I fought with myself whether or not to send you anything knowing that it would likely never reach you my darling- but if it does you will likely have already reached the mark of your birth year. The first of which we have not shared-

I have read and re-read your last letter so many times it has begun to fall apart in my hands! There are days where I delight, or cry inconsolably at what you left me there. I have written you in between almost every day and never sent them.

Today however finally I have taken the courage to, despite your last letter being left uncertain as to your whereabouts or whom specifically your mysterious gentlemen is, it is my instinct to address my letter to the place I knew you last stayed. Will it reach you? Or does some stranger read and amuse themselves laughing at my despair and eager to read the gossip of the English?

But all of this is only a waste of paper. It will either reach you, or it will not, and it is not exactly courage for myself that I have found the strength to make the attempt but because of the news I have only recently heard- and news otherwise I so need to share to someone.

Miss Mina has left us you know Sophie? She’s travelled to meet with your father whose has apparently fallen very ill. You were not with him, and I dared not share the contents of your letter with any for fear of how it might be beheld by our society. I would never do that to you my friend, no matter how we might have enjoyed such gossip together. Betraying you would be like betraying myself, you are more than a sister to me- did we not joke that once married we might still be able to claim for many years to have slept in each others arms more than our husbands?

It is to be your fathers fiancé Mina goes, but I fear that news of this will never reach you should I not put the pen to pad myself and tell you. If he is ill Sophie you must go to him! If some bond has been broken it must be mended. For our tear you know can and will be forgiven for you know me too well, passion is the only excuse I might accept for you; passion being my only ruler and so the only I might not begrudge you to be sworn to

That my dear is the second reason, and the more selfish one that I write to you for. It seems melancholy suits me better than mirth, for it has inspired the devotions of not one proposal but three in one day if you can believe it."

-I’m sure you can suspect at least two of admirers.

The all to amiable Doctor whom you I am sure know came after lunch. He spoke to me Sophie very straightforwardly. He told me how dear I was to him, though he had known me so little and what it would be with me to help and cheer him. He was going to tell me how unhappy he would be if I did not care for him but I began to cry!

Not simply for his sake, although I admit I was effected, but it was only this day that I had heard from father that Mina was leaving and all those terrible details about your fathers apparent illness and knowing all the while it was likely for us never to be reunited. At my tears he felt quite the brute and told me he did not desire to add to my present trouble. Then he broke off and asked if I could love him in time and when I shook my head his hands trembled and then with some hesitation he asked me if I cared already for someone else.

Well Sophie I felt a sort of duty to tell him there was and had been for quite awhile. He was very grave, the poor man- he took both his hands in mine and said he hoped I would be happy and that if I ever wanted a friend I must count on him as one of my best.

It’s a nice idea to be proposed to Sophie, and I suppose it is my just desserts to have been such a flirt for so long that it was high time to see the effect of such sentiments being scorned thoroughly. It is no fun watching a good man going away all broken hearted after he admits to loving you honestly. And that was only number one!

The second was no more expected than the first.

You know the American from Texas. I might have felt guilty here if you had been present because you know I had such high hopes for the two of you. But with those plans left unrealized I found myself now the target of his affections. And he said to me in that darling American slang ‘Won’t you just hitch up alongside of me and let us go down the long road together, driving in double harness?’ Well Sophie I had to tell him that I did not know anything of hitching and that I wasn’t broken to harness at all yet.

Though I admit that I couldn’t help but feel a sort of exultation that he was the second suitor in this day and before I could say a word he began pouring out a perfect torrent of love making, laying his very heart and soul at my feet and you know he must have seen something in my face which checked him for he stopped and said with a sort of manly fervor which I could have loved him for if I had felt free to .

Lucy, you are an honest hearted girl I know. I should not be here speaking to you as I am now if I did not believe you clean grit- tell me like one good fellow to another is there anyone else that you care for?”

I wonder my dear Sophie that men can be so noble when we women are so little worthy of them. Here I was almost making fun of this great hearted true gentleman, and I nearly burst into tears again! Really I felt very badly, If only they’d let a girl marry three or as many as she wanted and save her all of the trouble so that even if she wasn’t ‘free’ of sentiments she might be free of body as she so chose?

Blasphemy of course. 

He accepted my rejection and my frankness with that equally frank American way of his and was on his way after leaving me too with the promise of friendship. 

The third I suspect my dear will surprise you as the other two might not have. It surprised me I admit. For he’s been a longstanding friend to both of us and it was this proposal Sophie I finally accepted- a certain golden haired boy we both know. Our mutual friend has been keeping me some company upon the estate, which as we grew up so close I thought very little of, I suspect he knew of my pain though I did not explicitly share our last discourse he was aware that it seemed as if you may not be returning from your travels. So I was quite surprised to be handed a small letter requesting a private interlude between us beneath the wisteria (you know the ones Sophie, I feared you’d have sheared them if you’d seen them spring up again!). Of course in breaking decorum I found myself there after supper having made the excuses of reading before bed and there he made his proposal.

It sounds romantic I suppose. Beneath the Wisteria on an evening. I wish I could say I threw my arms around him and kissed him but be both know Artie would have reddened like a squashed tomato and such affections should i have desired to expend them would have been far more cherished by my previous two suitors. 

Yet it was a more meaningful proposal than I’d ever heard Sophie because within it I was promised that which has never left my mind after reading your letter and has plagued me each day since. That I must endeavor to keep myself free and unchained…

We see in some way marriage as just that. Only it's not true is it? Yes if we are lucky to find an advantageous arrangement we might have our own house to run as we like -as long as its run to the norms of your circle lest you be branded and excised, if we ‘are lucky’ our suitors are generous and decent lovers and providers and not cruel or callous brutes.

If we are lucky Sophie. That’s the hope of a woman's lot. To be lucky. 

And finally once we are married and **only** when we are married are we free to be unchaperoned, to go where one desires and to not be plagued or whispered about for only once you are ‘bridled’ as my dear Texan put it are we allowed the presumption of ‘freedom’

Better in many ways of a women these days to be a widow than a wife, ha! See my dear how calloused I’ve become since your departure! 

Within the day I had turned down two suitors and their passion. Under the wisteria was a different kind of passion offered to me. 

You see he knew about my rejections, being something of a friend to each man, of course you know he is the one who even introduced us to the Texan the two of which were as thick as thieves I suspect having experienced more of each other on those long American nights than would ever been admitted to in the light of the cold English mornings.

He said to me: 

"Lucy we are two bright dandies in a flock of grouse, together we might blend in, but apart we risk being plucked or made dull by the very society which might at once admire us and envy us. My family desires an advantageous marriage as yours does and between us I cannot imagine one better for the other than ourselves simply for the reason that neither of us would trap the other, we know each other too well I think. Had you accepted one of the others, those men being some of the best most ardently passionate of you that I know, I would not have dared speak to you here in terms so frankly as I do now. If you will not consider yourself willing to tie yourself Lucy to a bond which might mean freedom for each of us?"

So you see I suppose I did succumb to passion Sophie, as per usual **my own** , rather than any other. After all birds of a feather ought to flock together might they not?

Soon my dear I will be married. 

If you receive this know that you are welcome and may find a home wherever I might call mine. Know Sophie above all you will never be too fallen to reach my graces. 

Your ever ardent, and adoring -

Lucy Margaret Westenra


	5. April 30th-

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophie recieve's her birthday wish

**Sophie Harker's Diary**

**April 30th**

* * *

Imagine my surprise to awaken in a way entirely dissimilar to any other awakening I had thus experienced.

I was in my bed, which was normal for he often returned me there after we’d had an evening straining to my stamina (his own I cannot imagine bearing limits) and the first thing I noticed was how the blinds were drawn.

The second that I was not alone.

“Have I slept through the day?” I blurted, started so to see his eyes upon mine that I sat straight up in bewilderment a rush, like faintness making my head whirl. I had not shaken the alarm masked by the previous day and the dread quickened like curdled milk forgotten in the sun. Or had I woken to another day completely?

His chuckle was warm, sweet even.

“No no no, I’d never dream of letting you sleep on your special day.” _Your special day_.

My birthday of course.

Though waking had been a shock I sluggishly recalled my request.

_Today._

I must have been making a face of confusion for he laughed again and invited me to recline in his arms which I did. He petted me. It was soothing, this gentle stroking, I noted even then something slightly off and I realized after a moment that his fingers weren’t as cool as they always were, or perhaps that is the wrong perspective. That is: perhaps he was not warmer, but rather **I** was cooler. 

Yet I did not feel very cold. At least until I squeezed my hand into a little fist and felt the aching numbness of my fingers. 

No rhythm of time was marked against his chest. No beat no breath except that which he drew before speech. Habit or need for air movement over the vocal cords? I curled myself forehead drawing tucked beneath his chin so with a little breath I could take his scent. 

Something of the damp earth, wind perhaps. _Elusive._ Damp and moldering with the sweetness of decay. With my eyes closed I might imagine myself tucked beneath the shade of a great old tree, my head resting in a dry place. 

I kissed my own fingers feeling their chill and sighed and as I sighed he did as well like a wind moved through the great tree and he ran his fingers stroking them at my scalp, massaging, scratching gently and it elicited a quickening sense of comfort from me.

A breath. 

Preceding speech. I held mine listening to it being drawn in craning my head even so I might observe the sound it made, the sound his body made.

“Would you prefer to sleep?”

“Hm.” I considered this. “Cannot you read my mind to tell me? I find it difficult to decide.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” He teased and then more seriously. “Actually you’ve been rather _opaque_.” He admitted as if he begrudged me this. 

I feel at this point I am perhaps beyond shock or offense, perhaps those things are a luxury of the robust. 

“So you _can_ read minds.” I merely said.

“Generally a certain _bond_ is formed yes.” My consideration of this revolved around a somewhat satisfied feeling of _aha_ ! I _knew_ there were times I had not spoken aloud and he’d yet known. Then I wondered if he knew everything and this did in fact make an effect on my spirits some with a pang.

“So _non_ of my thoughts can be considered my own?” I asked, pin pricks of anxiety catching me like thorns.

“I’m not _influencing_ you if that’s what your asking,” I suppose that _was_ my fear.

“ _But_ you might, and you have haven’t you?”

“Only in small ways, ways I rather think you’ve enjoyed.” he said and his hand left my hair, travelling to the curve of my back and slipping beneath the covers for emphasis his hand moved to squeeze my hind. 

Like a bell being rung for dinner an almost hungry ache filled me and a little rush went all the way up my head as if I’d missed a step on the stairs. 

My heart rolled over in my throat.

“Than that is you or myself?” I asked resisting the overwhelming urge to shift my hips. To roll them.

“Oh that is all you,” He said and I felt my cheeks burning, shame clamming up where my heart had jammed itself in my throat as he continued. I was still pressed so tightly when he spoke I felt the hum of his speech, felt the cartilage of his throat, the ridge of his Adam's apple shifting beneath softly aged skin. I wondered where his scar was and that I might trace it with my tongue. 

How it might feel to bite.

His thought or mine? 

He squeezed me at that moment again pulling my leg to sling over his hip.

“Before you Sophie I had never considered there could be a creature as hungry as myself.” _Hungry yes_. “You can’t imagine how it pleases me to have been wrong in that respect.” I sucked a breath in, desire mingling with a new surge which quickened all the way to my fingers. I was very hungry all of a sudden, though perhaps I’d been hungry the whole time but hadn’t quite noticed it. 

Hungry for his hands on me,

Hungry for some thing to grab, squeeze or claw.

Hungry to feel the wind tear at my clothing, to rake across my bare flesh till I was left numb and echoing with its scream.

Hungry to feel the sun hot on my face.

His leg shifted between my thighs and I squeezed hard. Only when my jaw ached did I realized I was clenching my whole body, my teeth my hands at his vest, even my neck nosed into his throat where a pulse should have been that was not, my neck aching. 

I felt I might not speak. But wondered then that I might not need to and so with my new peculiar focus I felt bright hot in my mind as if the words might be formed in the air with a rod heated in the fire.

_Take me outside._

The words burned at the back of the throat, and behind my eyelids and without opening them I imagined pushing them out of my body, through my legs clenching around his knee from the tips of my gripped fingers from the tip of my nose. Escaping my brain white hot and red and zipping bright from my body into his.

It was a strange thing and I might have laughed at myself when finally I lost the strength weak and shaking after all that clenching had he not reacted.

An intake of breath. Sharp. 

I waited for him to speak. Breath preceded speech but he did not.

I’d surprised him.

Then, tentatively his hand moved up to my head again cupping around my ear.

I knew he did not speak with more surety than anything. For one the perfect clarity, even though he covered my ear, the second being that there was no movement for him and yet his voice was clear and crisp as if he’d spoken all the same.

_As you wish._

* * *

A cedar chest was within my room. He’d left to allow me to ready myself. Within this chest were effects appropriate I suspected for our excursion.

Within was a color so strong it nearly hurt my eyes to see gleaming in the fire and candle light, beneath it as well was a cloak. A quite modern Scarlet cardinal in a glorious equally violent red.

Somehow I knew this was his favorite color. What else could it be?

I laid out these things along with the other undergarments which were somewhat sparser than traditional Victorian undergarments. Less wiring certainly, the dress a flowing one beautiful with Victorian elements but I wondered if it was not more of the medieval style. One which provided more equality of movement. I was grateful for this consideration. 

It felt like some ritual. I could not gage the time passing in the dark of the room but dared not open the curtains in which to see where the light had travelled. Instead I moved in the dark. 

I cleaned myself by the waters of the bath, adding some scent with the oils in gem encrusted bottles. Behind my ears, my inner arms and by impulse down my belly from my navel to- well below. 

Remembering Lucy and the scent of geraniums and I sucked the scent in until I was dizzy with it until I felt almost thirsty and found myself guzzling from the fresh carafe left and still frosty with dew left for my washing with a cloth or for drink. It was so cold my teeth ached and I drank until my stomach felt full. I then made my records of the previous day, my birthday evening and have folded Lucy's letter now within these pages where she may now remain delicately pressed.

I was lucky I had enough time to relieve myself before he returned. 

Because he did quite quickly it seemed to me and I was not even dressed yet, I was in actuality still considering my hair and whether to leave it down or braid it.

“Take your time. It's yours after all.” He said immediately as if to soothe any worries and I settled back for a few strokes of my brush. Down. I thought. Then I stood to admire the dress again. Conscious of his watching me from the settee he had occupied.

I kept running my hands through my hair some absent part of me wondering if it had grown thinner, but it seemed to me as it always was. Assuaged of this absent worry I was ready to dress.

“Are you not going to let me change?”

“I **am** letting you change.” All of a sudden he was behind me, and he brought his hand around to capture and pull my long loose hair over my shoulder and to put it to one side to expose the ridge of my spine to him, and kissed the peak of those mountainous ridges. “I never said I wouldn’t watch.”

So he hadn’t.

He helped not a whit when my lace got tangled, my fingers fumbling, though sometimes he touched, such as when I slipped down my chemise and he traced a finger down my newly bared flesh, causing a cascade of shivers to run babbling like a brook down my spine. As distracting as he was it was difficult to focus on really what he’d asked me to consider and by the time I was redressed ready to lace myself therein he finally inserted himself, taking the fastenings with a jerk hard enough to make me gasp as it tightened about my bodice and swollen breasts which had in no ways permanently diminished in their most recent functions.

“Too tight?” 

“Yes.” He released only the smallest increment, apparently keen to keep me breathless. 

* * *

I was given another gift as we moved to leave the castle though I could hardly believe then that we really were. The first was given only after he’d taken my hand. His thumb continued a thoughtful stroke and his eyes lowered as if just remembering something.

“Oh yes, I nearly forgot.” He said and withdrew from an inner pocket which revealed to me a rich deep red velvet lining within the dark fabric for a brief moment before extending to me a pair of black gloves. “Its quite cool out.” He said by way of explanation.

They fit, for lack of a better term, like a glove.

“I hope some fashionable creature of my general shape has not met some terrible fate.” I remarked as I flexed my fingers and admired the thick stitching.

“Only a very well paid tailor and his assistants.” He promised

I am not sure if I was expecting that, though perhaps it did make sense. Clothing made especially for me. 

“Is that not something of a waste, or do you have a particular fetish for garnish?” 

“Presentation of a meal is almost as important as flavor.” By the look that lingered I felt the oncoming end of all this and was for the first time was unstirred by it. 

He put the scarlet cardigan around my shoulders and I felt as if I wore a marble shawl, each step a burden. So long without shoes I was suddenly acutely uncomfortable wearing them though I feared to mention my increasing weakness, and that the excursion I so yearned for would be cut off. 

Waiting for us as well, was a little basket he took up before we fully departed with a blanken through the rungs. We were to have a picnic. I held myself steadily and together we moved through the sweeping candle light arches until we met the great door.

“Shall we?” 

And the doors swung open without his hand leaving mine.

The brightness blinded me for its stark glare. Finally as the pain lessened my eyes adjusting I was greeted with the source of the brightness- instead of sky was bright white fog, a mist as well which had settled cloyingly about. 

To my amazement he had remained at my side, and stood, though he wore his hat quite smartly and slightly shadowed within it he smiled.

“Sunlight is then another superstition you’ve overcome?” I asked, admittedly having wondered that, there were still times my neck felt barren of the cross and how when I moved to touch my neck I only met the ridge of my collar bone.

“I don’t see any sunlight do you?” Of course I could not. The mist was thick and all encompassing.

“But isn’t there some danger of the fog clearing? That you might be harmed?”

“Are you Sophie Harker, worried about me?” He said teasingly.

“Merely _inquiring_ as to the risk my escort is taking.” I replied loftily. Really it was more an intellectual curiosity. I had neither the foolish notion he could or would be injured, but I was rather fascinated by the laws he seemed required to observe although I doubted them. If the cross, why not this?

I thought again of the girl too with a pang. Should I not be looking for her. _Why would I want to look?_ I seemed to be of two minds still.

“We’ll I suppose if the weather were to change there may be some risk.”

“Why would such a thing be unlikely? Have you some manner of predicting the weather? Or do you gain some thrill flirting with supposed combustion?” I quizzed, attempting a gaffe, however did not realize how seriously close to home I was as eye lids drooped to give him a mischievous look and he smiled.

“Supposed?” He drawled first, and my own eyes likely narrowed as I attempted to access him. What was so amusing?

Archly I replied “If such a thing has never occurred it seems hardly reasonable to be certain of it.” He laughed, a kind of charming snort and a reveal of his snaggled canine. An intrusive thought occurred to me (a more and more common occurrence) that I might more thoroughly enjoy running my tongue along that edge. 

His smile dropped as he responded his mouth pooching slightly. “Well, it seems to be something one experiences once, so that discounts your second theory.” 

“And the first?” He showed me his teeth again.

“I suppose you could say I have a certain talent for bringing the weather with me.”

There was a pause, where I began to expect he would leave me shrouded in mystery over his meaning, but that was not to be. Instead he drew in a slow and careful breath and then rounding his mouth to a gentle ‘O’ he tilted his head back exposing the jut of his Adam's apple to the eerie white light and exhaled and from his lips _fog_ unfurled.

And not merely a breaths worth either. 

It unspooled from him spilling and unfurling so that it cloyed to the hem of my dress. I hesitated only a moment before I reached curiously to move my hand through it. It was chill but formless, as any air.

It began to dissolve as I watched.

“Impressed?” 

“Thoroughly.” 

What else might he be capable?

* * *

At first I tried not to lean too strongly on his arm, and my strength was amplified some initially by my fear and awareness that we may soon be come across by unfamiliar eyes. I could smell the gypsies wood smoke and sometimes hear something distinctly human. But soon this passed as we walked unmolested and as my anxiety ebbed so too did my rigid strength so that I leaned well into him as we soon left the path. 

I let him lead me, instead focusing, enraptured by the smallest details sometimes simply closing my eyes to be subjected to them.

The movement of the cool crisp air against my cheeks nipping a little with fresh spring chill and tickling my neck, raising my flesh. Some air was so sharp my nose ached somewhat. Then there was the grass, rustling, long dragging fingers at my dress, stroking as we passed. 

Except it was only I who made noise. He walked with complete silence, no matter the terrain. Grass, or the mulchy undergrowth filled with twigs. 

My feet ached a little in their confines but there was so much else to focus on. To _absorb_. I was so hungry that even the pain to me was palatable. A worthwhile trade.

This was his scent. These woods. Sweet and cloying as if I was buried inside him

The forest awned and wood smoke that carried on the wind still at times. The tree’s magnificent and ancient stood like stark pikes like pillars through the white fog.

I could not help but be overcome with that first feeling i had upon seeing these woods. That feeling so long ago that I felt which rose than as if it might have been yesterday. When I stood with my father on frost hard ground and was overcome with the strange notion that the trees observed us with old malevolent eyes.

Now I felt almost a queer welcoming as if, brought now by my companion I was marked as friend, with the rites of a guest. 

As my strength noticeably began to wane but before I was willing to speak of it we transposed the tree line to emerge within a clearing. 

I knew immediately this was a place he’d brought me with particular care. Small flowers graced the clearing. Some I knew immediately. There was yarrows, yellow tansies which were like bright little suns, birds foot trefolis rivaled its yellow but with streaks of scarlet through the narrower folded petals, and ox-eyed daisy which is quite like any other daisy. There too was wild thyme! Bright purple and vetches of a similar pallet that hung in dewy clusters like foxgloves did. 

I left him then, caring not at all for my waning legs and sprang into the field feeling as spry as a little darting rabbit my dress wrung by the little hands of the flowers rustling gayly. The wind encircled me as I did a small spin and felt my legs watery at last.

A little bleat of tired exultation escaped me as I let myself fold down into the grass.

My heart palpitated in my breast, thumping like that little rabbit I imagined I was. Even though there was no sun the witness of the fog was clean and crisp so that when I lay I imagined I could feel its brightness on my face instead. I breathed quickly at first then summoned my will to slow myself and to take deep breaths. To taste and scent the loamy grasses. I moved to touch the petals but felt naught for the gloves so I tugged them free carelessly and stretched fingers which would quickly grow frigid to feel without ever opening my eyes the little buds.

“A veritable Persephone in spring.” 

A snake in the grass. Having slithered soundlessly.

“How kind of Hades to return me.” I mused, dampening my lips but refusing still to open my eyes. I thought he was perhaps speaking from the crown of my head. Could he hear my thoughts I wondered?

A test then.

_Kiss me._

A breeze cloyed my parted lips and I held my breath. But nothing.

I might have been disappointed had my hand not been captured.

I cannot too often remark how strangely tepid his flesh is, no matter the frequency of our contact, it is one that always strikes like a hammer blow to the belly, striking immediate bodily fear which was quicker than the mind of reason and must be talked down upon that first contact like a fussy infant. 

Despite instinct I kept my eyes firmly shut, feeling as he pressed my fingers straight and pulled gently to press each to his lips.

My heart fluttered at the tenderness, for it seemed as such to me then. To feel the softness of his mouth and each little press until my pinky- where his lips parted and he drew my smallest digit inside his mouth and sucked hard enough to draw a swirl of heat from my belly all the way to the very tip of my finger.

Finally I opened my eyes.

* * *

I will pause here because I there is much to write and writing it now in such detail is as tiring as any amble in the woods especially with all that occurred thereafter which seems as if it must have occurred in the span of days rather than a singular one. But I must be patient. It is all I have left I think, my patience and my growing stillness. Yes I must be patient and take care I know. . . Though I thought once not long ago of discarding my journal entirely now I know it to be my dearest companion, for within it is my last unwavering reflection and my only tool left to me that may bring clarity as well as in a way also be my confessional.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to point out any discontinuities. This chapter was a bit of this and a bit of that from segments I had written out previously but didn't end up working quite so well, but found their home here!  
> Hope you enjoyed it. The last chapter was a difficult act to follow, so this one is a little ebb before another rise I suppose you could say.  
> :)


	6. April 30th Continued

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A picnic in the woods, a sunset and a birthday party. What more can a girl ask?

_April 30th_

_Continued_

* * *

When I opened my eyes and saw him looking at me, perfectly unwholesomely still, especially in the soft movement the air gave everything around us I wondered if it was not simply by words that I might communicate to him but images.

For you see as his tongue curled around my finger evoking that tugging twinge of heat in my belly it was in familiarity and _remembrance_ of that very tongue and how only the previous day it surged inside of me. The very thought of which caused a strong need to clamp my legs tighter together.

So I dared to make a little experiment by this. 

And I conjured up in my minds eye the best I might the very feeling of his tongue which had acted as thick and dexterious as his member. How it had surged up inside me and curled as if I was a bowl desperately licked clean.

If I had failed I would have succeeded in arousing myself in the least, however I did not.

Actually I rather think I may have surprised him.

Its all in the _breath_ with him I’m finding and though it was not necessary he took one and seemed to roll it around his tongue.

“You are _rather_ good at that.” I attempted to stifle the rise of triumph which sought to escape as a embarrassed laugh, biting my lips together gently with my teeth while I watched his eyes dance, salaciously I would say as he slowly drew his tongue over the bottom of his lip.

“This was meant to be **your** picnic.” He told me mocking reserve.

“It still is I should think.” I replied not in the least dissuaded from encouraging the specific attention I desired to explore further. The grass made up walls around me and I felt perfectly nestled there against the earth, the breeze that sometimes swept almost not reaching me at all as if I was sinking, furrowing deeper and deeper away. Here was a place between places.

He was still watching me with that immutable stillness, drinking me in. He was always drinking or eating one way or another as if his unlife required constant nourishment. Only now he drank with his eyes which drew like fingers down my cheek, above the fluttering within my chest. My pinky was cool and wet now in the air, my hand still caught with his thumb pressed into my palm.

When his eyes roved down his free hand followed, I knew by instinct to tear the fabric away there and realizing this I shied and could not help but give a further request.

“No rending this time- perhaps delicately?” I suggested, my cheeks prickling and feeling a little giddy rush of silliness at all of this. _Directing_ was new to me. 

Around us the mist swirled, coyly or in agitation. His eyes were a veil, half hooded and darkening. They always seemed to me to grow darker somehow but never _lighter_ , alway re-setting my definition of darkness creating ever deeper umbers and pallets beneath his enigmatic brow and the sensuous curve of his lips.

“What?” I could not help but prompt and that sensuous curve tugged ever slightly before pressing a gentle kiss between my thumb and forefinger. 

“I’m deciding whether its possible to spoil you too much.” 

“Are you so incapable of delicacy?” I asked, teasing.

“ _Instinctually_ , " He hummed as if this would all be a very great effort and finally lifted his brow. "but an effort might be made as it is your birthday.” He said. _Such a gift._ I nearly said mockingly before he continued, with a thoughtful air. “So, as last night might have been a wolf to prey, today will be-” and he paused drawing in his lower lip considering as his eyes drifted up as if to seek his answer, it appeared he lit upon it rather quickly for his expression brightened. “Ah _a bee_ to nectar.” 

Oh and there _was_ nectar to be had. I was a font for it, especially after the languid undressing all too tortuously done. The strings plucked free by a clawed hand which at first I anticipated at any moment to lost their patience and slash the offending fabric free. However I quickly realized it was to be **me** to lose my patience, squirming and he was the one ever steady, ever patient. 

Petals unfurled red to fleshy white layers below and I was slick with eagerness. 

I think he desired me to beg, yet I could not bare to as I might in other times. Today was my birthday and there would be no begging. Some obstinate part of me decided. Instead I abided by his tortuous slowness (I had I supposed _asked_ for it in this case) and felt the growing the sensuality buzzing in me with such quickness to yearning that I prickled and ached, curling and uncurling my toes, still restrained as they were until finally my hosiery was being glided down between my legs, he taking one and crooking it until it came off the leg and I might be spread before him. I did not regret my patience for I had such a view of his own hunger which in itself was a marvel to see fully restrained as such.

His nostrils flared and the strength in his hands became tighter, the lines around his mouth fine and deepening to grave with a kind of austere air of focus. Before he knelt, he stood, bereaving me of his full attention, though his actions too betrayed him, snapping and impatient. He unclasped his cloak and in a smooth motion unfurled if from his shoulders and laying it upon the ground affording him the space to kneel. I myself didn't mind the dirt.

I was growing long heated, held in suspension. The air seemed to quiver too, a slight breeze. As he picked up my knee he kissed it absently. Absent because his eyes were already trained upon the centre of me. Darker and darker still. I felt his teeth upon my inner thigh and shivered, as the stalks might shiver on the wing beats of butterflies of very delicate flowers.

He looked at me once before descending. “I will try not to sting.”

* * *

I watched the flowers quiver. Stirred by my half caught moans, by the air always living and moving.

_And, dark beauty, I shall give you_

_Kisses cold as the moon_

_And the caresses of a snake_

_That crawls around a grave_.

Yes, the caresses of a snake, 

I quivered for time without breath feeling it surging inside me. Writhing serpentine. 

_Melancholy waltz, and languid vertigo!_

_Every flower exhales perfume like a censer;_

I quivered like a tormented heart.

My melancholy sky is one of misty white and bright.

 _The sky is sad and beautiful like an immense altar_.

I quaked there upon the alter bed of grass and flowers. My fingers puncturing the earth, collecting the grain of earths flesh between the beds of nails and my flesh. The dirt so soft and cool. 

When my flesh finally hummed coming to its resonance I keened, closing my eyes to the brightness, and turning my head to the earth writhing, half sobbing, my legs latched shamelessly around him as he continued his suckling, my entire body pulsing and wringing itself until I was sweetly, achingly hollow and tears stung hot in the corners of my eyes.

Then it was lunch.

I slept a little after like a babe filled, nestled into the earth and grasses with him, a bed of loam and sweet grass. The blanket used instead of as a setting was wrapped around me and I found myself being woken by him, nestled as I was beneath his arm, my head tucked beneath his chin.

There was no motion, and yet I was aware that he had woken me, or perhaps summoned my consciousness from whatever depths it resided, for all at once I was awake and aware that thought the mist still swirled, that the daylight was falling.

“Come.” He said and we rose.

We walked to the edge of the field and then through the woods for what seemed like very little time. I could not place or mark whether we had come this way or another, beyond that it _felt_ different and I came to find it was. I realized before us was a very thick wall of mist, which greeted us like a barrier where the trees grew sparser. At the tree line he stopped.

“Go through here and wait for me.” He said and released my hand.

There was a moment of blindness in the mist where I seemed to be stranded within it. It had a different substance than air, it tickled and lingered in your throat and lungs cloying and I imagined that time spent long in it might induce instinctual sense of suffocation.

But I out of it within three steps.

Out of it and into the light.

Not the light like in the mist, ambient bright white but _real_ light. Light which left shadows and spots of brightness dancing on your vision. Flat grass plains stretched over to the edge of a ragged cliff, a cliff which faced the setting sun.

_'The sun has drowned in his blood which congeals.'_

Such a **red** , brilliant.

I could taste it bright on my tongue, feel it on my face leaving me with the imprint of its touch there, and scorching itself on my eyes so that even when I blinked it glowed in the dark of my closed lids.

I walked towards it as if it might reach it, and almost forgot my footing, all too soon I swayed near the edge, shocking me as rocks scuttled off.

Below was the great river. What was its name? Father had told it to me once, but that was so long ago wasn't it. The rocks clattered, skittering down the edge but was soon entirely soundless to me.

 _Would my body leave just as quietly_?

A dark thought in such brightness, the first brightness afforded to me, and the first place that **I** might be that **he** could not be. Perhaps strengthened by the clarity this where shadows were banned from standing the thought came clearly. _I can kill my self now._

I pushed more rocks from the edge, a clump of earth sagging held my a little mat of grass and roots, I pressed a little more and it tore finally, dirt and clumps falling away and I felt the dimmest echo of feeling at this thought. 

again it disappeared becoming soundless and within me an answer rose.

Noise and silence.

Inevitable.

The question was only when.

 _and why should I?_ _The sun is setting and it’s quite beautiful_.

* * *

I found a place to watch it, near the tree line where the mist lingered like a wall and I could almost feel him there behind it. I stone jutted out with broad flat back from the earth providing me an area of respite and I thought. _The single star he is denied is mine today_. 

And it seemed a pity that I might not share it with him.

So I did.

It felt like the stretching and straining of a previously unused muscle from crown to the top of my spine, though the strain came from the space above my brow most acutely. Was this the mythical _third eye_ after all?

All the books would be packed with in the library before I might check.

Or I will be dead.

A stone dropped which first cries then makes no sound.

Behind me though I did not see it at first the mist was moving, inching ever towards the stone where I sat.

He had come to sit behind me. The pain in my eyes intensified to something sharper, the pressures of needles in one's eyes, but I found I could not look away from the sun.

Within me I felt his awe, and yearning; his reverence and despair.

Silently, so that soon even I burned for breath we watched her descend in our own way, my eyes weeping with strain until she sunk glowing and finally when my eyes were allowed to close they wept freely and the imprint of the molten orb was left upon my lids shining bright white, a reflection as real as the moon.

I had to keep my eyes closed what felt like a long time, wood smoke becoming sweet and thick on the air and the sound of the wind moving through the trees. He said nothing to me when we rose, but it was to my amazement that I thought there was some wetness upon his cheeks though he did not face me directly. The world had fallen to twilight and with a pang I realized it was the end of Persephone's’ spring, I was then, to return to the underworld.

I wasn’t expecting it to have music, however.

The castle walls decaying and crumbling were alive by firelight playing with in. creeping out and casting long shadows and furtive motions in the darkness. Before I could ask him about our direction he spoke.

“Now what would a birthday be without a party?”

* * *

As we approached I was flooded with unease and uncertainty, my thoughts dancing and darting, all bidding me to release the Counts arm and rush back within the safety of the castle.

Yes ‘safety’ I can laugh at myself. Still my thoughts ran fearfully.

Would they be horrified? What if _he_ did something horrifying? My thoughts had been fogged by arousal and my captivity now the cool night air cut clean through. I was stricken with the urge to escape from all eyes which might see me, which might look upon me with disgust and judgment which I had so long knew I deserved.

Despite this increasing resistance of spirit he kept our pace, If he had hesitated I may have balked completely and dug my heels into the stone-refusing to move further. 

Instead we were brought to a connecting arch leading us to the courtyard in which they had made their main encampment. I looked up and thought I might spy the very window I had stared down upon and think I did, though the turret stretched up in the dark. There I had watched them, now here I was still altogether unprepared to meet them.

There was music, and here I was at least distracted from my own thoughts. The figures were still distant to us, like spirits dancing between shade and fire and silk the music was… well its difficult to describe but it held the wild sense of a carnival music, yet were carnival music was at times merely silly this music instead carried the somber haunting ache of my beloved moonlight sonata at its soul between those bursts of joviality and merriment.

We stepped through the arch and entered a world of silks which hung swaying between the caravans in the indolent breeze, warm and then cool from the fire which roared beyond, the place in-between where hot and cool mingled yet did not mix.

It was like entering another world through those silks, each layer bringing us further from the cold isolation I had begun to know so well and into something wholly different. He held the last curtain aside for me so that I might first emerge to the heart of the scene. 

It was ironically something like I might imagine from a penny dreadful, the heathens dancing around a great fire: men, and women, young and old, some young girls were set apart by their beauty youth and the unmistakably scandalous ‘gypsy’ dress which were composed of torn silks and strung with what looked like gold and silver coins that sang with the dancers barefoot dancing steps. Several young children were spun or held swaying by men or grandmothers. 

Fat sizzled over the fire set on lances to cook, tended to by a man with a curling moustache who diced meats on a board raw and gleaming in the firelight taking the hot 'kebabs' I think they are called and replacing them with newly lanced meets rolled in spices sharp and mouthwatering.

I would have liked to watch them like this for longer but, a child with greasy cheeks bounced on a hip seemed to catch sight of us and as my companion joined my side to his lofty height soon the mothers gaze was drawn and soon the laughing and speaking was smothered to a rushed whisper, like a rippling alarm and the music arrested so suddenly that only the roar of the fire filled the naked night and dark eyes fell upon us one by one until it we were being watched by a sea of dark solemn expectant faces.

I braced myself for hostility, and stiffened my arm resisting my companion already who was silent and still as our watchers. 

Then the crowd parted and to my surprise that dizzy aged ancient who had peered up at me from my vantage point (for I saw naught an older creature there) hobbled by use of her cane her face so folded I at first believed she was eyeless, except that as she neared I saw something dark peering from the folds, bright unmistakably intelligent eyes that shone like bright black stones.

I can do no justice to what she said then only that she spoke in a wizened old voice so hoarse and low I could barely hear it. What I did mark was that she did not seem afraid. She stood as tall as one might at such an age and with her chin up and her gaze, through even those folds- direct and sharp first on my face and then upon my chaperone who then apparently hearing her quite clearly responded and though he spoke in her tongue, a language foreign to me and one which seemed an amalgamation of many I heard like an echo in my own mind a translation in his crisp English voice.

 _“I bid you welcome to these lands the lands of your ancestors-”_ Then to he offered his hand out and in the old woman's time she took it. I expected her to dip and kiss the ring he hand there, but to my immanent surprise his other hand moved to cup that gnarled old thing and he crouched low to kiss hers instead.

The old woman giggled. Yes, I _daresay giggled,_ the bright free laugh only the children's and very old might have without reserve and she patted his cheek and said something which could not be mistaken for anything but a term of endearment and she kissed his hand several times her little tiny eyes dancing as brightly as any might and grinning with tiny bright white teeth. He did not translate what she said but I longed to know.

But that was how all those gleaming eyes and faces looked suddenly for what followed was a happy cry of welcome if not adulation, bodies suddenly pressing in eager and reaching kissing their fingers and touching them to us.

I think I begun to protest, overwhelmed by the hands which now reached to touch the scarlet cardigan at my shoulders. One of the dancers stood out to me most- a girl my own age smiling and with eyes bright as one looks upon a dear friend and taking my hand in her warm smooth one she kissed my cheek like a sister and murmured something- though I likely poorly sounded it out - _neveshta_ \- and something I could believe was their fondest form of greeting. 

The music began up again, and suddenly we were immersed, moving with the throng apart of a tide.

 **“I told you it would be a party.”** He said above the din as we began to flow to the other side of the fire, where apparently some comfort was being made for us. Pillows and silks for us to recline upon. Bright cheeked women and children were here, and at least one woman with a round unmistakable pregnant belly. She did not rise but smiled brightly and nodded in greeting and kissing her fingers extended them as such to us as if to show her affection. The old woman came with us, so it was not a quick journey, there was an older woman at her side, unmistakably older yet it was difficult to say why, perhaps she lacked of fullness of cheek and smoothness of flesh. Yet she was clearly beautiful still, a mole marked her to me distinctly which somehow made features that without it might have been lesser more comely, such as the slight curve to her nose. Her hair hung long and loose and she kept an arm over the old one, never straying far and walking in perfect slow steps beside her, through her eyes came up to me, as friendly as any of the others but guarded with interest I felt with some heat was too familiar.

The old one was settled first upon the pillows, I couldn't help but remark that this was a high honor indeed, he taking his seat next and myself offered the third. 

The dancer, the bright eyed girl who must have been my age waited upon me, her name was Katsia I would come to know later. She brought me a ceramic bowl with a yellowish liquid in it, I thought at first tea, and was about to take it only to my surprise she dipped her fingers within it and upon withdrawing it I could see they gleamed with a kind of oil and she made it clear she desired to anoint me.

“I did say something about **strange** customs did I not?” This comment was not particularly helpful and I believe he took some amusement in seeing my perturbation. The girl waited however, smiling and patient with soft doe eyes until I returned to look at her and nodded my permission.

It smelled strangely floral but not especially strongly or good, at least not to my nose, however he watched, and I saw his nostrils flare gently as my flesh anointed with this strange elixer. A line down my crown to my nose tip, I thought at first a cross but no, instead just down, down my lips and my chin down my throat. I shivered as she reached then the crown of my breasts and where they met and there she drew three little forks and a line over each mound to meet it and then two line from behind my ears to the clavicle again. Then she withdrew smiling and bowing her head slightly with a flutter of her dark comely lashes.

Then she handed me another clay cup, filled with a clear liquid I believed at first to be water. My nose filled with that strange oil could not mark a distinct scent of it then and my mouth dry, my throat aching with hunger I eagerly tipped this back and swallowed it in two gulps. 

Fire, rather than a slaking cool burned at first like ice on my tongue and slithered like an eel down my throat. Whatever it was it struck my mind with the instant rush of drunkenness, only the kind that is supposed to occur after many drinks of wine but only far more slowly. The clay cup fumbled from my fingers as I sputtered strongly people near us fell absolutely quiet as I gave a choking cough.

My eyes swam and this smattering of silence was swallowed by sudden excited laughter, not mocking but through weeping eyes it was distinctly a kind of a ‘ _huzzah_!’ and I needed to hold onto my pillow to keep myself steady the young maiden grinning with bright eyes her teeth bright white through caramel skin. Dracula too was chuckling a kind of approval.

“I don’t think they’ve ever seen a foreigner take Slivovitz so well. You’ve impressed them.” He leaned back like some gypsy lord and missed only some horned crown and jewels for embellishment. But then he needed no embellishment to mark himself as separate, his height and build were enough for that. My mind had been set aloft on that queer liquid.

“Slivovitz?” I said over a fat numb tongue still dizzy and part of me certain that I was in fact whirling around the fire where the girl had left to join her sisters and friends.

“It’s a **brandy** made from Damson plums, quite strong if I remember correctly, the scent always catches people off guard.”

“I couldn’t smell anything but the oil, I thought they’d given me water.” I admitted blinking to regain my senses but finding them loftily out of reach. “Who **are** these people?” I asked, still looking, still trying to understand things. “You seem so- **intimate** with them.” His dark eyes slide to mind from the corner of his eye.

“Intimacy well earned after more than four hundred years serving me.” There was that dizzy number again, but suddenly the people dancing seemed far less innocent and indeed, the innocent exuberance was quashed by the weight of what his words could mean and stroking the lot of them with a more malevolent brush.

“Serving you.” I took in a babe upon a knee’s several pillows down from us, his bright face, smeared with grease of a chicken on chubby cheeks and bitterness stung my breasts into a painful ache of remembrance. “Do they sacrifice their own children, or do they steal them for you?” I had quite forgotten I could be so hostile, but it seemed as if the ‘Slivovitz’ had loosened something in me.

“I see the Slivovitz has put some fire in your breast.” He remarked but remained pleasant and unaffected. “All lords take some tax from their people, mine happens to be generally in the form of flesh. but it is less frequent than you might imagine. They travel and come only when I'd call. That is where they are most useful providing eyes and ears, and hands across Europe. You have your own Gypsies in England even.

"Yours?" I asked, perturbed by this, thinking of the young tramp Georgie who would come to barter buttons and silks to the maids and servants with his tawny skin and bright grey eyes. They used to say my mother had eyes like they did. With a shiver I reminded my self that the eyes here were honied brown, cinnamon and cardamom, not storm clouds and ice sheets.

"Some. You know If you had paid attention coming through this land you would have noticed the closer you travelled to me the less you’d find of the common plagues of society.”

“People?” I asked archly, blinking away my reverie and catching up.

“No-” and he spoke a little sharper, growing tired of my indolent tone and gestured to the people. “Look at them Sophie, really look at them.” I did, though at first I was merely doing it for stubborn show refusing to humor any notion that any deal with him could have any positive effect. But as he spoke, I did begin to see. “Where are the waifs, the wastrels? The pox ridden, the syphilitic? When they smile can you count their teeth on one hand or two?” Of course I had marked the particular beauty, the robustness.

“And _you_ claim to be the angel of this effect?” I asked, still hot. "You expect me to believe you eat the _scraps_?

“No, but I- like nature have taken a habit of _weeding_ the gardens I tend, to speak. After several generations this is what I have.” There was something like pride in his face and the fire of Slivovitz churned my belly.

“Yet they live as tramps still, without even _shoes_ on their feet?” I said, ignoring the fact that I very much desired to remove _my_ shoes.

His look was caustic and slightly condescending “These ' _people'_ have been across Europe in the shadows of cathedrals, do they _look_ as if they care for any of that nonsense?”

“Nonsense? of a roof above one’s head and an education?” He laughed then at me.

“Oh, its an ‘education’ their lacking? Tell me Sophie, how many languages do you speak?”

“English, French and some German.” I replied defensively.

“Ah, well, if only you knew some Romanian, Turkish, Slavic, on top of your German and French you _might_ be able to keep up. As a conqueror I admire the English, but it’s the bleeding hearted fools that believe that creatures who desire to live unlike you are to be pitied. As if to say that any flower beyond the English rose is to be considered a weed and uprooted.” 

I’d never been spoken to with such scorn and I felt like a scolded child suddenly and at the same time this spat afforded me a glimpse of him I rarely saw and only vaguely felt the presence of.

That ‘lord’ with all the demarcations of a man far too educated than his general company. Women in England are rarely spoken to about politics with any sincerity and I felt in him all the disappointed disdain of one reminded of being among the ignorant. It stung with the bitterness of truth, for despite how I desired not to see the rosy robust complexions of those peoples surrounding me, having been among that poor caste of dregs in London I could not deny the vitality and good health to them. Nor, despite the indecency of their style, find them bewitching and beautiful. 

“I suppose I am a bleeding hearted fool, and you won’t draw a compliment from me that would justify your method of _gardening_ , but-” and I admitted this reluctantly. “The beauty can be admired with out approval of the method of curation or of its curator.”

I did not meet his gaze but sensed his disapproval melting, my stomach made an empty plaintive noise which he no doubt too note of for he raised his hand and shouted something.

The meat was brought on those sticks- as well as more clear cool fluid in a chalice I made a face upon seeing it and Dracula laughed.

“Its water,” He assured me and I sheepishly sipped it to confirm that before tipping it back, slaking my thirst. I was ravenously hungry, but realized awkwardly that I’d be forced to use my hands and attempted to maneuver this with some delicacy earning more laughter for this pitiable attempt. 

“If ever was there better company for messy eaters I would not know of them, don’t be shy, and come here.” He plucked the tray from my hands and leaned himself back bidding me to take place in his lap. 

I was conscious of the many faces and eyes, but was lured by the food as well as the sense of loose morals of the people many of which rested as he bade me to do, women lounging in the laps of what must have been lovers, or husbands. The men too when they too grew tired with heads laid back on to silken skirts and enjoying the ministrations of fingers through scalp. 

With hesitation I followed suit and was rewarded by the coolness of his body, the delight of his hands brushing my hair from my shoulder to grace the heated flesh with these touches which immediately stirred me I leaned into this despite any rational compunction to remain stiff and facing away from him was a little less shy to pluck apart the chicken within my fingers and favored the herb encrusted meat until the stick was picked clean. His approval was met through the brush of his lips and the stroke of his hands upon my body. My hair, or my arm, or just below my arm across the sensitive span of ribs.. Or snaking further down to stroke upon my thigh. He seemed to enjoy several long breaths. 

“They never tell me what they put in that ointment but it is _maddening_.” he murmured which inspired an heightened awareness of his interests to have me in this position. Suddenly the food was a stone in my belly.

He couldn’t - not with all those people?

But he was kissing my neck. Skimming his teeth causing my heart to surge, a feeling he captured with his tongue, leaving a wet trail to the air. I grew dizzy with the same drunken elation that the slivovitz left and an even more pleasing heat. 

There was an intense _vivid_ longing to feel him penetrate me, to feel his mouth part and the hard ridge of his teeth sink into the rind of my flesh. The scent of the oil too beguiled me. The pressure growing in my belly seemed to surge up through my body, heightened by my still full breasts as if I was myself ripe and thick with an ambrosia threatening to burst. _Take me_ . Let your teeth sink, _give me release_. 

The feeling of eyes, knowing that we were being watched…was unexpectedly intoxicating.

“ _Covenante!”_ A single call went up suddenly, and was followed by a chorus.

“Covante covante!” 

I was stolen from the remote island of pleasure inches from its shore and deposited back into myself with a shock. When my eyes did open it was to see that were were being watched, and even the music had quieted and the dancing had stopped. 

“Covenant?” I asked, no longer thrilled but humiliated and finding it difficult to know where to look. Dracula groaned as if himself frustrated and did not release me.

“Covenant.” He muttered as if a pesky thing he’d forgotten.

He addressed the group in their language, some answer to their demand, holding his hand up for silence. It was recognizable in German, perhaps for my benefit as being:

“ _It will be fulfilled!”_ and a pleased cry went up at that and it seemed as if some arrangements were being made. I moved to get up but he kept me quite rooted there and nuzzled the flesh of my neck again like a dog unwilling to let his treat escape.

“What does that mean?”

“You’ll see soon enough.” he murmured half groaning beneath the lobe of my ear. “All that mention of bleeding hearts got me a little excited. You know Sophie sometimes I think with the right _gardening_ , you would be a companion capable of keeping up with me with only the right- conditioning.”

“Having some grasp now of where your interests lay, it seems a fallen woman, rather than an educated one may better please you.” 

“And what makes you think I don’t demand both?” He asked, but they were gathering, drifting to form a circle around the great fire with Dracula, and by me being in his lap still clearly the 'peak' of the circle, or at least where all the attention lay. the dancing had stopped, as had the music leaving the night suddenly thick with a kind of anticipation.

A loud energetic man with broad expression features and rosy dark cheeks held up a silver chalice and a cry went up, once upon its reveal, and again as it was filled with something from a dark bladder. To Dracula's right was the elder, and beside her the lovely caretaker. Beside me was was that young dancing beauty with thick dark curls whose eyes lingered upon me in such a way to make me flush deeper in heat and humiliation though I marked more of a sly curiosity in her eyes rather than judgment. 

A curtain of silence fell when the man knelt. I moved to sit up but Dracula kept me well bound there an I stilled, watching in fascination as he moved I thought to accept the chalice. 

Except his hand hovered atop of it, wrist peaking out of his sleeve then twisted to turn to the side.

An unmistakably fragrant sweetness the sweetness I now knew to be Slivoviz perfume the air of the clear liquid. Dracula's hand moved from my side and reaching about me I watched as with his nail above this chalice he split his wrist.

Inky dark blood turned the plum water to a deep burgundy wine. 

There was not a whisper from the people who all fell silent.

I did not understand what would be so apparent in hindsight until the man took the chalice with reverence and to the eldest at our right bowed deeply, kneeling and extending the chalice to her.

She took it and drank.

“My god.” escaped me before I could help myself.

“Shh- they take this very seriously.” He told me about the shell of my ear returning his hold to my middle.

With dark fascination I watched as each in turn took a sip from the chalice. Even the _children_ , though their mothers merely dipped their fingers and rubbed the ruby almost wine coloured drink upon their child's lips. I shuddered in disgust and mounting horror at what I was witnessing. 

“Why?” I could not bear it, and it became even stranger as some who took the drinks eyes began to roll as if overcome by some presence or intense intoxication.

“I’ve been among these people since they began several generations ago. Actually their matriarch was one who served me most faithfully in life. I’ve fed from them, sparingly, taking the eldest of them when they desire it, and over each generation and through my blood, they commune with their dead. This is our 'covenant'. Our binding and the gift I offer in exchange for their loyalty. They do not believe god would have their souls, so they are enshrined to me and their reward is a form of immortality and wisdom passed among each.”

Could that be true? That they were seeing things? Spirits? Or was it only madness, drunkenness and this an abuse of the ignorant and uneducated for which he profited?

The chalice was returned finally to the girl beside me, and as she took it with reverence she looked at me again and smiled, with dark wholesome almond eyes and full lips before sipping. And then she extended it to me.

“You don’t have to of course.” He took it for me and I could see there was more than a mouth full left.

“What would it do for me?” I asked, disturbed by the fact my instinct was not immediately _no_ , but rather. . . curiosity.

“You’d see something of your father I expect.”

Papa. My head spun at this new knowledge.

I took the chalice carefully, torn by curiosity and equal warning. I scanned the people who watched some with hooded eyes some smiling, some gazing off into the distance or beginning to whisper or laugh. Some had tears in their eyes as if they were gazing into faces of long lost beloveds.

It burned as Slivovitz did but there was something deeper there too something earthen, like dregs. I swallowed twice and found my lips being licked clean of what remained. The chalice left my hands, taken by him and passed to that elder again beside us. Still wrapped in his embrace, he’d lowered his head to the crook of my neck, I did not yet at first realize the ceremony had not yet ended until I felt him stiffen and him take a sharp inhalation. I opened my eyes to see the chalice was being still passed. For each who took the chalice now pricked their finger and refilled it with their own blood. 

This maddened him, his nostril flared at each prick like a starving animal sees a twitching distant meal. I was distracted a little from my own disappointment. 

I felt no presence. No hovering, only a little cheated.

Finally the chalice returned to the dancer girl and she pricked her finger as did all the others and once again held the chalice to use to take.

Only her eyes were grey now, and her skin a pale milk. 

There was a shock of recognition, as if I was seeing myself in a mirror. But it was not me, though she was younger than me. She died younger than me you see, so young when she had me.

“Mama?”

Dracula drained the chalice and my mother's eyes softly hooded her lips parting. I thought to say something when… When I felt his teeth slide into me, hungry and greedily he sucked and this vision if that's what it was, was overcome by the dizzying crash of euphoria. 

It felt maddeningly good. I moaned, forgetting anything but the feeling of being gathered up, and of being supped upon.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wooo hoo, getting into it now :) I really wanted to have this posted last night but this will have to do.  
> Hope you all had a happy Halloween!


	7. April 30th - May 1st 1897

_**Sophie Harker's Diary** _

_**April 30th - May 1st 1897** _

* * *

It became very strange then, more dream like than memory, so it is a struggle to account exactly all that occurred, but I will do my best. My mind like those strips of skirts fluttering, a multitude of colors and motions, swirling, and waving and drifting. 

I was being touched, and caressed, I was dancing I think with that quiet beauty with the curling hair. My feet bare, I must have discarded my shoes.

Visions like memories half devoured welled as together we spun like colored silks unravelling. In the crowds I was struck it what I thought could have been the face of my mother, or sometimes the face of my father- but he held none of the peace and tranquility of my mothers and he was somehow different. Sometimes a man would turn and I would catch a glimpse of 'him'- _older-_ and blinking with quiet bewilderment watching me within the crowd.

I wanted to reach out to him, to touch him.

I must have separated from the girl for I found my way to him. He turned and took my waist spinning me as he once did was when I was a child and I laughed as I did then. For a moment I was that little girl again.

Then he took me tighter about my waist and kissed me, his moustache, a moustache my father never had tickling my lips. 

He was warm so warm and the scent of him like liquid smoke and salty.

My father was long gone in his place a man with broad shoulders and sunburned deep skin and thick lashes dark lashes tightly closed, his stubble burning me as he kissed me, his tongue hot and thick in my mouth, sloppy and rolling with my own.

There was a flash of something before we parted, the feeling of my body prone, splayed under a sheet of glimmering diamonds, something tearing- a sea of emerald floating away. . . 

Our mouths separated with a smacking sound, women, the one I would know as Zaria with the comely mole and my companion Katisa were pulling us apart laughing. The mans cool amber eyes were swimming distant and he smiled with rosy cheeks laughing and called me Cybil.

He had been in a memory of another beloved. And I-

I was falling back upon pillows, my flesh feeling fever hot breaking over the chill of silk.

I opened my eyes to see those almond sweet ones again and her mouth moving, but though she spoke in her usual tongue I swear I understood her as readily as English.

 _“Rest now, let me care for you.”_ I sighed, realizing how heavy I felt, and how good it felt to recline.

“You looked like my mother.” I think I said and laughed.

“Did she?” Came a reply. He was there with Zaria. I knew her name then clearly as I knew Katsia’s though I do not know how or why I should, perhaps in all the spinning I had been told- I do not know.

“She likes you.” He told me his eyes upon Katsia who had not looked away from me. 

I kept calling her a girl, but we could have been twins of age. Perhaps we are both girls. Seeing the Zaria slipped beside him I could not help but remark the same.

“And she you.”

“Ah, Zaria is looking for a very particula favor, aren't you Zaria?” I do not know that Zaria understood his English but she nodded none the less, her eyes cool but eager, her hand slipping to her throat to pull away the blouse gently. She wanted him to feed from her. Her hand slipped to his thigh and she said very clearly.

“ _An exchange my lord.”_

Dracula's eyes glittered, his mouth held perfectly still in contemplation and hunger, his hand coming to her neck feeling.

Katsia was stroking me hair, slipping lower in the pillows to lay half across me, her hand tracing from my brow line to my breasts.

“ _Your skin is like milk_.” and my heart skipped, yet I was caught with fascination of the others in the tent.

“What favor?" I wondered. 

He did not look away from Zaria as he answered me in a low level voice edged with a kind of restraintm, "An ingredient really, something for their Gypsy magic.” He told me airily and then, “Tell me Sophie, who does your little friend look like now?”

I blinked and looked up, Katsia was still petting me, her lip caught between her teeth. Only it wasn’t Katsia anymore and I half choked upon my next breath- for before me was **Lucy**.

Our eyes met and I was arrested, she seeing this smiled and taking advantage of my attention lowered her head to kiss me. 

My heart swelled and despaired at the soft touch of her familiar lips which sensually pecked mine, like a small birds. Lucy was like that, she only teased, drew you out, so that if you did dare to respond with passion she could claim perfect innocence while leaving you wondering about your own depravity. 

All of this flooded me with memories. Not my fathers but my own, things I suspect now 'He’ had enjoyed from me.

For these little sweet pecks were those same kind she caught from me as we dashed around corners out what we thought was the sight of our governess. Moments where we would lean into one another, the closeness of our bodies lingering in the halls or in the bed we shared as girls. The bed we grew to be little women in- Lucy and I had slept all too often together, and I can only admit now that it was never in total innocence and was the honest reason for Mina’s desire to have us separated.

The way we’d disappear around corners giggling then fall silent. The way she was always leaning in to read my diary and how we enjoyed tickling on another, tickling until our chests and ribs and faces ached and burned. For the way she’d brush against me and tease me, before she’d move to woo another stallion for her stables. . . . I did not recognize desire then, naive it was nothing but a lingering sweetness caught in a breath, of longing for something without a name. But I had experienced its depths now and I recognize that I might never had acknowledged in Lucy’s gaze and touches- and in my own.

I felt no shame to kiss her deeply now.

She was geraniums and strawberries. I buried my hands into the long lush red curls and pulled her atop of me so that she she had to break away giggling and laughing a little and that I did to and our kisses met again sweeter and gentle, a sensual pull building in my belly.

She broke away to kiss my cheek then my chin and neck and the swell of my still aching breasts. Her thigh lean and smooth sliding between mine applying gentle pressure which encouraged by clamping her leg tightly with mine and raising my knee a little we both seemed to delight in feeling our bodies beginning to writhe and rock, her nimble fingers coming to part the laces of my bodice as clawed hand had not so long before when I lay in sweet grass.

I did not question this, for reality had taken the shape of a dream and one does not question a dream when they are within them- only after. For me I had returned to Lucy’s bed, only now with the earnest willingness and unveiled eyes to seek and touch and taste in ways we had never so flagrantly tried, things my naivete had disguised to me of my own wants.

This dream however was not experienced alone, realities intermingled for as I turned my head, enjoying Lucy’s kisses upon my breast her hands slipping lower over the swell which left tart bitter aches I opened my eyes to see Dracula reclining like a Persian king his chest bared, unbuttoned and his trousers undone. Zaria’s head bobbing her suckling loud and vivacious bringing heat to my face and sending a stronger wave of arousal to me as I watched him tip his head back his hand laid upon her head, they were turned just so I might see him disappear into her mouth engulfed and gleaming again as she slide her mouth up it leaving wet froth on the dark black curls of his mound. 

His eyes were closed, his mouth parted so that I could see the serration of his teeth and the slow rock of his hips evidence of his eagerness and pleasure.

Then his eyes fluttered to mine and I realized Lucy was pulling free the straps of my dress, freeing my breasts for she took one in her mouth a murmur of surprise and adulation escaping her. 

_“Oh Sophie!”_ she giggled, half mocking me, her teeth skimming so that I gasped just as Dracula said in a perfectly clear voice without moving his mouth.

**' _Do you enjoy watching? '_**

I did.

It certainly wasn’t jealously that rolled through me as Lucy hitched her knee. I rocked my hips and returned the favor only to feel her hum tingle through me.

It was such a thing only whores were known to do -for a price- and seeing it was as provocative as fascinatingly arousing to watch, especially as he vocalized in a low groan himself his hand clasping her head.

Lucy soon dominated my attention and I was distracted, soon motivated into contributing to building our mutual satisfaction. I wanted to explore her body, her flesh as I had never the courage to previously. She had a devious little mole just above her breast specifically which required my attention first.

Her skin was of the softest velvet her hair satin and the hair below thick and coarse clinging with musk and dew,darker but with the same coppery tones of her hair.

We had risen together and were coiled twined so that I was uncertain where our bodies separated, finding a new way to writhe so our mounds met, our hips attempting to find rhythm, the pressure built by our connection, the friction sending delicious thrills through me our breasts bared chests teasing each other, Lucy’s ampler than my own, her figure like the hourglass, my own long and lean but neither of us fought for dominance though I would have submitted willingly to Lucy. 

But Lucy did not demand that.

I felt him watching us, if I had enjoyed him, he too enjoyed this. I saw him meet his 'end' at the eager sucking mouth and workings of Zaria with a twisting of grip and a clench and shudder his jaw flexing eyes shutting and a small noise escaping his throat as his seed was released. 

Zaria wasted no time sitting up and, producing a small vial worked her mouth releasing all that she had gathered with a smug dewy look to her flushed face. _her ingredient_. I wondered in fascination. Dracula panted gently, opening his eyes which had darkened his hand moving down to her throat.

 _“And now your end of the bargain._ ”

Obediently Zaria tipped her head.

“ _Of course,_ _my lord._ ” Only I saw her face, the pained look she made how she tensed when I knew I would flutter. 

As he sunk his teeth to her flesh hot sparks flew through my own neck, my groin and my breasts. Lucy pitched against me and I gasped rocking and dizzy in an orgasms' which was almost delicate. Lucy squeezed me still rocking.

She had not yet found her end and I felt a small wave of self consciousness. _What if I cannot deliver her as she has delivered me?_

“Perhaps I can help.” I felt Lucy coil in my arms stiffening gently in trepidation as he snaked in behind her and quietly he whispered at the cusp of his ear. _‘Shhhh.”_

I did not expect now the surge of jealousy to ring through me followed by that same peculiar shame and twisting arousal and sat like a hot coal in my throat, as his hands skimmed over the flesh of her ribs. His mouth was bright red and I tugged my body tight to hers possessively nuzzling where he might bite her and sucked gently opening my eyes to see him settling low behind her. He brought his hands to my head and I broke away my suckling to feel his breath against my lips, tingling with life. Zaria had gone with her prize and it was only us three now. His tongue, so different than the one I had just enjoyed brought the flavor of Zaria’s iron, my stomach becoming watery and my tongue danced over the row of his teeth. 

“ _Taste her_.” he bade me and I felt his assurance, his confidence. I might have resisted it, the prickle of jealously inspiring the potential but did not. Instead I let him take Lucy into his arms, to take her against his now bare broad chest her breasts pale cream standing out against the thick bands of his dark haired arms which wrapped around her her own uncertainly crossed against his, her face flush and her eyes watching me with a tentative trust I do not know If I deserved.

I tasted the salt of her sweat from her nave lower bringing the soft flesh between my teeth sucking gently and then lower to the thicket of hair and I began tasting her as I had been tasted though with less skill and deftness.

My clumsiness brought fresh uncertainty to me but Lucy writhed in encouragement her hips bucking her legs spreading wider.

His hands massaged her breasts plucking rolling or pinching, drawing hitches in her breath which I saw below the the gentle swell of her nave. 

_“Put your fingers inside her.”_ and a powerful image came to me like a memory swelling and welling in my minds eye, as if with more expert my tongue rolled and deftly sucked another woman who moaned and squirmed.

It was myself.

I broke away with a little gasp and Lucy's lashes fluttered open, her lower lip sucked between her teeth. He was smiling, darkly restrained. He had not bitten her. Was this not apart of their covenant? His rights to taste them as he would? Or was that only done in exchange as Zaria had traded blood for his seed?

His hand moved and I found myself pressed back into the musk of her mound.

One never tells you quite the effort it takes and yet I thrilled at feeling her thighs squeeze, her hips rock or to elicit the moans though my tongue and jaw began to ache gently. I slipped my finger inside her curling gently, and rolled my tongue as I had felt done to me and feeling her squeeze around my finger was invited to penetrate her with another into her slick folds.

Suckling, and rolling. I felt at any moment I might not be able to continue but broke through this each time I might have failed and felt her pleasure building until in a seeming lull she gasped and I felt her trembling, _fluttering_ sensual waves. I delighted in the last burst of energy I might have to suck until she was gasping and giggling and pushing me away. Dracula had released me and I bit the inside of her thigh gently feeling the pillowy flesh between my teeth and sucking until she was pulling me up. Dracula slipped from behind her. Allowing her to pull me down to the pillows to lay along her body her eyes dewy and sedate, while my own heart pumped with a kind of giddy triumph my head spinning and my jaw and tongue carrying that ache of triumph.

She kissed and licked my lips and I grew hot eagerly, my tongue dominating her quickly growing dulcet one as we took to the pillows to lay along each other.

I might had been left frustrated as she gave me sleepy kisses her breath becoming softer, but Dracula’s body pressed long along mine, his lips on my neck sending red hot sparks through me. 

Yes. 

_Take me hard, please_.

He was happy to oblige, hooking my leg from the side and entering me, thrusting hard from there holding me stiff as he drove himself in, though his hand quickly strove downward to bury in the thicket of my hair rubbing.

But I wanted more. I wanted to feel more of him.

_Sink into me._

When his mouth watered, it felt as if it was my own. He thrusted deeper. Lucy still kissed my breasts growing darker in my vision, hair bleeding from burnished copper to brass to cooling coals her skin darkening to dusky dew.

It was not Lucy but Katsia of course.

His teeth sunk into me like hot pokers striking deep pain through my chest which brought a gasp and an equally heady dizzying shock of pleasure.

He was growling, his arm wrapped round my body from below, nails gently digging into my flesh, the other between my legs which had begun to twitch like throbs as he rolled his fingers there, fucking deeply into me.

As the wave rolled off, he did not drink but instead bit again sending a shrill shriek through me. There was a brief wave of fear suddenly, of dread so keen I could taste it, but helpless to it it became the queerest sublime form of ecstasy and I thought to my self in a somewhat last coherent thought. _I seem to pay a higher price for your seed_. It was an errant thought, and my last clear one, surreal and called distantly from some observer of my self who looked on wryly. 

My whimpering cry filled the tent as I gushed and then. . . 

* * *

What I saw next was. . . another reality intermingled caught juxtaposed between worlds like a stained glass shard or a mirror showing another room.

Behind Katsia's sleeping body the floor became stone as if it was the stone floor of the castle and there was dark shadow light of some distant candle lighting the edge of something metal- like metal legs of a cot.

Was it an animal? But no, there was ' _that_ ' face squinting in disbelief, gawping from a hollowed out near cadaverous face- and that cry came again, not simply a whimper but a kind of whine. 

_“Sophie_?”

I might have screamed. But it was swallowed, or rather I was swallowed. Like a flame being snuffed I felt his seed being spilled inside me and the contraction of his pleasure being met and my vision blurred as he suckled me, noisy and wet and profane as Zaria's ministrations upon him had been. Hungry wet and sloppy- my vision blurred, blurred so that the stone flooring became indistinct but there was something something I think shadowy creeping out from beneath the bed. It had no eyes. No face yet I know it was looking at me, reaching for me.

And I felt something. Something worse than horror and dread as it did. Something like panic but more desperate.

* * *

Then I dreamed.

Or perhaps It is better to say- I remembered.

* * *

_**May 1st 1897** _

I cannot bear now to write what it was I dreamt. It still remains with me like a the cold blow of an ax sinks into the flesh of a tree. I keep thinking only _it cannot be, it cannot be it cannot be._

He left me to them that morning and I awoke sobbing slightly in Katsia's sleepy arms. The shock of it was so that my shame did not capture me immediately but my sense of exposure and shame of my indecency did come. Katsia made that easier. She was sweet and companionable but our language barriers had re-assumed themselves, though at times I captured words I had no right to know or understand and I know not what to make of that yet still. 

I was not well this morning, even less so than any other morning I can remember rising and I was left with quite a mess between my legs which has often not been the norm. Katsia brought me some water in a bucket and there was some cleaning done, I feeling none too well with accumulating humiliations, though that was softened by the relative ease in which I was received into the comforts of the tribe, and the tentative gentleness of Katsia who had a very easy smiling nature with only the barest edge to suggest her wickedness. Perhaps she thought the same of me.

The people were respectful and quiet. Going about their morning in the harsh cold light as if it was any other. Katsia shared with me their clothing, we fit quite well though I was taller than she and she covered me in shawls to keep me warm. Always smiling and flushing, her hands lingering upon me so that even I could not help through the maddening aching of my head and body to feel a fluttering in return of tenderness. At first I allowed myself in my exhaustion to be taken care of by them. The food fatty and delicious the previous night, this morning made me sick to smell the meat and I became ill enough to vomit all that had lingered in my belly. Katsia sat me close to the fire and soon Zaria was attending me, her eyes sharp. Seeing her brought the vision of her head bobbing and the lewd sucking I had not long ago witnessed and I grew hot in embarrassment, though I was in fact quite hot all over.

Zaria seemed not to share the same sense of self conciousness. She touched my head with her lips as one kisses a babe to take their temperature and murmured something beneath her breath, her eyes sharp over me and settling over my breasts. She said something to Katsia which made her eyes widen a little. A fresh dose of uneasiness pervaded me and I longed to understand their words. I was brought something in a goatskin water skin that was not water but seemed to be some kind of soup. My stomach still turning and my skin hot I first turned it away but Zaria pushed it into my hands impatiently her brows raising and tone something like a motherly reproach. Finally I accepted it and took a mouthful of the contents. Something about its tepid temperature was repulsive but the ache in my throat sent a shiver of anticipation through me and I swallowed feeling suddenly soothed. 

Their remedy was remarkably effective, in another hour I felt able and willing to eat the kebabs fresh on the sticks of chicken and venison. Though I dared not eat too much fearing a quick turn. 

Then I took my leave of Katsia, who followed me somewhat like a puppy to the front doors her hands lingering on mine until I turned back and seeing her face felt another fluttering in my belly.

Her eyes were not Lucy's’ blues, but their caramel coloring and the sweet part to her lips was enough to invoke tenderness in me. Losing her bashfulness seeing my lingering look upon her lips she advanced upon me until I was pressed into the wall. She was smaller than I, shorter by a head but I felt more diminutive by the motion of her mouth and the impression of her hunger that her lips made upon mine. 

She withdrew with a mischievous smirk and a swaying sashay of her hips which gave me a skip to my heart.

But I had so much to contemplate and feeling a little better all thoughts of her left me.

* * *

I have now spent all my time _recollecting_ that most eventful day, trying to summon the courage to confront what vision lingers still malignant in my mind and still I am unsettled. I feel unable to stay still much longer and the day is still long before me.

So I have decided. If this mystery is set to agitate me I must find another to distract me. 

I will now go to find that secret passage that my father failed to find and perhaps to meet Dracula's last companion or -pet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't want to gloss over the fact that some things in sex are actually hard work, even if the payoff is usually worth while ;)


	8. May ??? 1897

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sophie seeks to uncover secrets,  
> Not realizing she is to find her own.

_**Sophie Harker's Diary** _

_**May ??? 1897** _

* * *

It has been a long time since I held a pen. Or perhaps it hasn’t been.

It seemed so innocent then, as innocent as anything can be in such a place as this.

To find the secret room…

I expected to find his secrets there.

Not my own.

It is difficult to summon myself back to what was -because where I am now it all seems so far gone. Yet If I am to understand how I came to be here I suppose I must.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -and the spool unravels-


	9. May ??? 1897

**_Sophie Harker's Diary_ **

**_May ??? 1897_ **

* * *

> _  
> It has been a long time since I held a pen. Or perhaps it hasn’t been._
> 
> _It seemed so innocent then, as innocent as anything can be in such a place._
> 
> _To find the secret room…_
> 
> _I expected to find his secrets._
> 
> _Not my own._
> 
> _It is difficult to summon myself back to what was because where I am now it all seems so far gone. Yet If I am to understand how I came to be here I suppose I must._

* * *

I found it just where the maps told me I would, a secret stair behind the stone leading and winding up into a new kind of darkness.

The air there became heavy with a new kind of dust and musk, like that of rotting food, gassy and fetid, something spoiled and curdling- _sour_. Perhaps I should have turned away then. But I didn’t. For what else had I to do but contemplate my agitated state? Better something new to occupy me, to exert myself and allow me to stay busy.

The scent thickened as the darkness opened up into a balcony of a large room which was cut through with light which shone in streaks from dusty boarded windows. My own candelabra flickering and my arm aching for having held it high for so long. 

Three large ‘crates’ sat within the room, and there were tables: tables filled with dusty papers strewn, knocked over candles which had melted down to puddles wax, great tanks- vials and jars littering among pens and inkwells some spilled and dried. 

A lab of sorts I thought, though in terrible repair. I brought myself down to the last stair finally and I heard more distinctly a faint scratching noise I had previously discounted. A scrabbling rustling and quiet murmurs I’d come to learn to ignore in the castle, but here that was quite impossible.

The smell grew stronger and then as I stepped down I saw the dress.

Dirty grey with dust.

I thought it first a cast off sheet- perhaps something which had been draped over a box or a table?

Something hummed and my hairs rose as I stepped closer. I felt the keenness of eyes upon me. As if I was being watched, in a way I was I suppose.

“Hello?” I asked and stepped further in. The light casting around and forcing me to double take at the 'sheet' upon the ground- for a small pale grisly gray **foot** peeked from what must have been fine white lace and not a sheet at all. The crate no longer obstructed my sight and there she was watching me with big open dark eyes.

The visitor.

Blood long dried crusted to her mouth and her hands resting on her chest- not peacefully but caught with an almost thoughtful bewilderment around the object that was struck through her mangled chest a broken off piece of splintered wood.

A fly buzzed from her lips and a white crust at their corner were the seedlings left of crusted maggots. My own mind hummed with their bloated music, revulsion thick in my throat.

“Oh god” I turned away. Falling painfully to my knees which struck against the stones as I retched up the slurry of soup I had ingested by the gypsies which reeked awfully. 

I could do nothing for a long while but smell my own sick and star at the the orange and fluid chunks ever feeling those dark eyes upon me, which spoke with quiet solemnity as if I could hear her very voice.

' _Why, why did you tell him_?'

“He said he wouldn’t be angry.” I told her, I tried to explain, but my guts were empty and twisting, as if her fingers had curled up inside me, curled up as other fingers had last night.

‘ _Help us- we asked you to help us!’_

Like an echo I heard the child, like a kick in my innards. A knocking deep inside. Betrayed.

And a face behind my eyelids.

Gaunt and corpse like and peering into the tent from a stone room.

I was sick again but only retched on empty air straining to bring up what there was nothing of and my head pounded. What had I done? Had I killed her?

As I sat there the quiet squeaks and rustlings were too close to ignore and from where I knelt very close to me I saw within the body of a great glass ‘orb’ attached to one large box was swarming with **rats**. 

I knew then I should never had come to this place. I knew I should not rise and peer closer to the dark pit- yet I did and as I did and I saw a face. Or what was left of one- beneath the swarming rats was some bloody pulp which might have been the hollow of eyes. The teeth I could see for the lips had been chewed off by the rats as well as the eyelid, dry and sinking but open and staring up at me unmoving. I backed away and behind me in its sister flies tapped lazily, begging release on fat glutted bodies, a sea of black corpses below of its brethren and a single pale arm- purple and putrescent and green shaded obvious with rot lingering in the section. As if the creature within had been reaching her arm inside when- when the killing blow came.

It was a room of death for death, his pets put out to pasture.

But why? For me?

No. 

A colder reason perhaps. He was leaving soon after all. 

It all felt suddenly so small that place, with the darkness streaked with light so hot it scalded all that it shone upon, dancing horrors in your eyes wherever they might be so foolish as to linger as mind so foolishly had.

I tripped over it.

Not a body, a trunk. Which would not be anomalous except for the fabric which spilled out its closed mouth like the poking of a tongue, light shining on unmistakably rich emerald silks.

Emerald silks I knew.

_A bed of stone under a sheet of diamonds blinking, emerald sea rended- discarded to expose flesh._

For all the horrors I had just witnessed how can explain that it was seeing that green that struck me dumb so dumb it was thoughtless, like being held in place by a stranger, a foreigner in your own mind and body.

 _Don’t open it._

But I did.

Dresses.

But not just any dresses.

 **My dresses**.

The emerald green glimmered as I took it up and held it out as if pleased to see me and released a sigh as it unfurled to my vision which was choked by what escaped me as horror.

It was rended at the breast- I felt it then, the tearing of it, how it came free that night. How hungry he’d been how cold the air had been on my breasts- how his mouth was colder as he took me into his mouth, the hardness of my flesh between his teeth and split the cherry of my breast between them.-

Dark dried blood stained upon the breast. My heart surged in recognition to what was once its own, the smell of the open chest warred with the pungent foulness of the room. Unmistakable musk and in places I saw on the dresses below the crust of fluids.

I took out another- and another.

Each worn and destroyed- collected like trophies.

My head split like a fresh wound ever more agonizing as from this split images outpoured from my vision

_Laying on the turret-_

_“Let me in-” and my hearts desire, drunk and rapacious, his body thick between my legs which strained and struggled to part for him._

_“I don’t want to hurt anymore” I whispered._

_“It doesn’t all have to hurt- let me have you Sophie and I will relieve your burdens- just let me in.”_

But I couldn’t, _**I didn’t** **!**_

My mind seemed at once to fracture, a caricature of memory rended in two- one false. The _feeling_ of saying no- **no** \- of course I said _no!_ And with it came the sleeping calm and with it the memory of his eyes, not his face just his **eyes** and the faint sucking sound- an echo of him at my breasts - his lips smeared with the rouge of my life's-blood and that command once indistinct and now tart on my tongue, unfurling like the bitter dried tea leaves, and crushed pomegranate seeds between my teeth.

_“Forget now, rest in innocence.”_

All at once it was as if a spell had broken, and with it my mind. All that had been known now irrevocable torn away, torn apart like a strange dream taken for memory and replaced with something else- something that could not be-

But was.

For up upon that tower, drunk and desperate he had begged let me in and I had said:

_Yes._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay everyone, I was quite sick for awhile and am on the mend now and unfortunately had to bust butt to get caught up with work so it significantly has hindered my writing time.
> 
> As twists go, I'm honestly not sure how this one ranks, but here goes- ;)


	10. April 14th 1897

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophie recalls the day her memories split,  
> April 14th 1897

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you'd like to re-read April 14th see part two of the series this picks part of the chapter for clarity sake.

_**Sophie Harker's Diary** _

_**April** **14 1897** _

* * *

“Yes, Seventeen . Is  **Seventeen** enough?”

“Glasses of wine? Likely.” He teased and I laughed

“Stars?” I prompted, looking up at them. 

“Hardly.”

“To die then?” 

He was quiet for what seemed like several beats of my drunk heart.

“Take it from someone who knows, it's never enough.” This was of no consolation to me, though I cannot imagine anything could be. 

“It hardly seems- It's only- One ought to have  **lived** before they die and can one really have lived at all in seventeen years?” I’d like to think of myself as a normally quite gay drunk, but now I found I was of the sorrowful self pitying lot.

“If you weren't going to die in the observable future what would you have done with your life?"

"Well if I found a man who could sufficiently impress me and make Lucy jealous-"

"Is that a requirement?"

"Oh absolutely, Lucy would never give me up to any creature she would not herself submit to-" I said and continued gravely. "-Of course Lucy herself would marry some poor man who'd she'd have wrapped around her finger and we'd have fat babies."

"And you'd live happily ever after?"

"Of course not." I retorted and upon catching his look of interest, drawing him out of the droll bored look my speech had lulled him into I continued. "I'll die in childbirth just like my mother, but there would be an  **impression** of happily ever after which would be more vivid and real than anything life might really give me."

"And if you didn't die, what would Sophie Harker do with immortality?”

“Immortality?” I considered this, drumming my fingers on the blanket. “You know Lucy was always better at living than me, I was always afraid to." Of course I had never much considered what a life might be without restraints such as he was suggesting. Even removing death, there was always the simple restraint of being born a women to contend with.

"And if you weren't afraid?"

"I'd go to America and become a pioneer of the new world.”

“Really?” He asked, seemingly with earnest interest. I rolled back to face him because the stars were getting blurry pulling up the cloak beneath my chin. He was watching me very avidly, as I might have watched my hippopotamus Obayse.

“There's this terribly wealthy Texan Lucy had her eye on for me despite me being so clearly too plain in comparison to Lucy-" I told him, as batty as a church bell, hypnotized by my own stories and memories. "-God I'm rambling- I suppose I mean I quite liked his stories, even if only half of them turn out to be true... It's just such a  **new** place, a place without history and as much as I like history I've always wished I was brave enough to do something new. Lucy is always doing new things. You know I haven't even swam in the ocean? I was always too scared to swim in it even though Lucy dared me, it's very big and rolly and it frightened me to be something so small inside something so elemental... Perhaps I'd swim to America!” At the end of this long tirade I gasped feeling far more pleasantly drunk and laughed at myself.

“You’d pickle in all that salt, but I rather think you are already quite pickled.” He remarked and moved to take my glass.

“No- not nearly. I’ve not forgotten a thing. Shouldn’t I be… Forgetful?” Struggling with this movement my head began to swirl, my language was already leaving me in chunks but my feelings were as strong, carried on those big waves. 

“Perhaps I’ve kept you up too late.” He suggested. 

At this I was seized with that awful premonition of returning to my rooms and the all too vivid memory swelled in me of what I irrationally feared would greet me- fetid stuffy air, the buzzing of flies.

As if he was taking me away at that moment I found myself clutching at him.

“I don’t want to go down yet.”

“Why?” 

“The baby.” Though the air was cool and sweet I feared the next breath would be tainted, by foul air, by buzzing and tickling. 

In the light of the moon, his head laid upon his arm there was something sympathetic in his look, and invited by my touch, he touched me. Stroking my cheek and skimming my lip, that despite being numb, tingled pleasantly.

“You were so determined to have it your way.” He mused, half marveling half mocking. “But it can be other ways too you know, Sophie if you’ll let it.”

The tide of my body swelled upon the deep pull of the dark moon of his eyes, sucking me in, lighting my flesh with heat where there was only numbing cold. 

‘ When did the stars start swirling like that?’ I was struggling to think clearly, remembering his words and what they could mean while also conscious of liquid heat beginning in my belly. 

“If I let,  **you** , you mean.” I asked, suddenly sure that either he was growing closer or I nearer, for the next I saw only his brow and felt the strong grip of his hand at the back of my neck, fingers cradling my scalp and the skim of flesh against my lips.

"Let me have you."

"Our deal-."

"Forget the deal. Welcome me upon your own desire, upon your own will." He whispered, like a hiss, like a snake travelling to my belly, a forked tongue coaxing the flesh to part.

Desire kindling in my belly was a reprieve from aching sorrows. My stillness only a pretense of resistance, broken as he slipped inside my mouth, soaking the heat with this tongue as if I was the oasis for which he drank … Anticipation began.

Anticipation equal to my dread and revelry.

I wanted a part of it to be over with.

_ 'Let him take it all quickly and be done.' _

In the other I wanted strangely… To be punished. The weight of the child was heavy within the belly as if he had been my own. Now that belly was coaxed to arousal, deepening my shame and bitterness.

_ 'Let him hurt me! Let him take me. I deserve nothing better, the vile creature I am!' _

I despaired, cast adrift of myself, born on the choppy seas of strong drink and senses. 

And the last feeling I might synthesize into thought:

_ 'Let this maddening pain and hopelessness just be eased... Just for a moment!' _

Without realizing it I had begun to sob, despair which his greedy mouth swallowed and soon I was pressed beneath his weight, his cold body invading the warmth of the cloak, eager to invade my heat as he'd supped it from my mouth. His weight soothed the storming in my breast while deepening that of my belly. As if all that attempted to break through my inner walls was furloughed and kept from spilling out only by him. 

The loin of his thigh pushed between my legs demanding they part enough so he might nestle his hip to my crux. I whimpered driven both by the currents carried within me as well as my despair and it was devoured by his own profane noise. Stoked by my pain, driven to devour it. He moaned, a deep belly aching reverberation like a cats purr as his tongue withdrew with interest to take instead the hot salty trail of my tears.

"Sophie." He moaned. My own name which had always seemed to me to be a boring thing was suddenly strange and mysterious spoken so sensually. I was just 'Sophie.' surely this 'Sophie' was someone completely different and some mistake had been made?

There was an increasing sensation his weight, shifting in undulations subtly heightening and building a new feeling. Every thing carried deeper on those drunken waves and soon there was nothing but the building of that tide, crashing and throbbing as he hitched himself maddeningly between my legs without ever even removing my dress while his mouth found many satisfying occupations: tasting my tears, or hungrily consuming my whimpers of despair and ecstasy that he might capture directly from my lips. Taking them with his strong possessive mouth.

Coaxed by his kisses and his motions, my belly cramped in ever increased acute anticipation and with that was a strange promise: a promise to eclipse my despair and engulf me so totally-  _ If only I had more _ .

The stars were singing in celestial silence above, and my lungs burned. As the feeling built, my fingers skimming the edge of some celestial plane the trappings of my mortal frame became an increasing agony, my dress restraining my legs, the dampening a torture.

My head was growing thick, dizzy, my desire pounded like a drum, wild in my mind and my chest. . . He was kissing me so fervently, it was nothing I'd ever felt, his lips, the feeling of his teeth upon my lips, he stole my breath and made me forget to care.

* * *

**And here it is my mind cleaves.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 'pair' to this chapter will be up almost immediately- consider it kinda like all of those old 'season recap' episodes that all of us ninties and older kids will be familiar with ;) it probably should have gone with the last chapter but I was all caught up in life!


	11. April 14th 1897 as it was-to- 'undated May' entry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophie faces the consequences of her choices, the truth about herself and her fate.

**_Sophie Harker's Diary_ **

**_1897_ **

* * *

> _He was asking me something again, was it that same sinuous question? Let me in. His tongue demanded his body demanded, and I felt the words trace my skin like fingers begging for entry. I felt myself answer, but what I might have said... I think was..._ **_No_ ** _._

* * *

Yes, I **want** to believe it, it comes so easily to my mind even now, like opium smoke there is something sweet, sleepy, and yet I hold the truth in my hands the silken tatters of it and it begins to fade, as one brings lace closer to the eyes to see through the holes, to see it is hardly a fabric at all but nothing but threads interwoven so delicate that it is mostly made of holes after all.

He was asking me something again, was it that same sinuous question? Let me in. His tongue demanded his body demanded, and I felt the words trace my skin like fingers begging for entry. I felt myself answer:

"Yes." and “ _Please.”_

"Turn it away." He bade me, gesturing me to turn away the cross and with fumbling fingers I did.

He withdrew to look upon me and I had only a breath to capture the blank hungry look in his face before with a single motion of his hand the breast of my dress was rended. A scrap of the emerald shone in the light before it fell away to the dark.

_The feeling of my body prone, splayed under a sheet of glimmering diamonds, something tearing- a sea of emerald floating away. . ._

Cool air licked the warm flesh, now barren, the first of cold fear sunk into me as I saw his teeth change and my terror swirling I brought up my hands to hold his face away from mine. To look upon me with those eyes, voids of light on a starry blanket. 

Was that wonder in his eyes?

Or just hunger?

He sunk his teeth into the breast which he'd teased with that very same tongue that morning and the cold lance pierced me to my breast and I heard myself cry out, sharp as the wind and carried just as quickly away by it. My regret was bright and burning and bitter until tingling a new wave of of something tantalizing crept through me, overtaking the cold with something akin to warmth, or perhaps the kind of cold that burns.

He swallowed thickly, still moving between my legs and I felt a swell of dizziness, my hands which had attempted to bar him then gathering him close and my heart surging. yes. yes it feels good.

In my mind was a reckless thrill, those bitter pomegranate seeds crushed now, bleeding into my mouth as he supped my flesh. Suckling life from my breast I thought with dreadful kind of sick mirth that I might give life after all this, that something might be nourished by me.

and I wanted him to keep suckling.

Suckling until I was as empty as I felt, so that I might float freely.

_‘yes, take me, take all of me.’_

He withdrew with a barbaric gasp, eyes blacker than the sky and bloody as his lips were.

"All of you Sophie?" He asked half ragged, shocking me despite my delirium for I knew he'd heard what I had not spoken aloud. His meaning was not to be mistaken with the hitch in his hip between my legs. 

_"Would it hurt?"_ So silly, yet I was so dizzy.

 _"_ No more than I have hurt you already _."_

His hand slid up the flank of my thigh, pushing up my dress and I felt that helpless desperate terrified feeling again as if I was trying to escape something and the only thing keeping that which I sought to escape away from me was the feelings he elicited with his touch. My fingers knotted in his collar, his tongue rolling over his bottom lip, his teeth scraping the blood as his black eyes danced

"Make it go away." He did not need me to explain what it was I desired him to make go away, he knew it seemed that terror which I did not have a name for. 

He pulled apart the fabric, gathering it knotting it inside his hands like a fist and pulling, like guts are pulled out of a pumpkin, clumped, my fabric tore, the external silken skirts pushed up beyond my knees. 

"Tell me Sophie, would I make your Lucy jealous?" He asked sliding into my open thighs. it felt good to squeeze around his hips, to feel the weight of him more fully.

I was not expecting this question, but looking at him I could not deny the answer though it brought slight tears to my eyes.

"Oh yes." I said and he swallowed my whimper, his hand moving between our bodies.

"Do you know what you taste like Sophie?" he asked like a growl between my lips, my heart hitched as I gained my first sense of him, pulled free from the fabric of his trousers, nestling first against my pubic bone, hard and thick and strange.

"No." I murmured, too acutely aware of the sensation, alien to me.

"Hungry."

and I was.

Hungry for feeling, hungry for absence.

Hungry for noise, hungry for silence.

I found static in the pleasure and the pain, the noise of flesh meeting and vivid slashes of the elements I was bared to. I became blank to it. my thoughts silent. my despair silent. The hardness of his thrusts sending me into the stone, bearing fresh pains, fresh static, an evaporation of self beneath a blanket of stars.

His thrusts did not stop only increased in their zealotry as he leaned back baring me further in the night his face bloodied and turned up to the moon like a crying savage wolf- his hands about my hips tight as he worked his way inside me seeming as lost as I to the enjoyment of my body as I was.

When he looked upon me, his lips and accent curling over those teeth, he said with thick reverence.

"Look at you, a pretty night thing." and he stuck his hand between our bodies rubbing with his thumb pad over a place unexplored by me eliciting a fresh shocked feeling through me. I came apart so easily, so new and raw, my breasts hard and aching in the cold, my flesh so pale it was luminescent in the dark. 

"Tell me Sophie what would you dream of?" he asked, there was a hitch in his thick voice, the burden of his desire growing unbearable. 

'Dreams.'? I mused, bitterly, shivering feeling my slickness between my legs now like cooling morning dew.

"I don't want to dream." I said, and felt my voice crack as it left me, like broken porcelain. I didn't want to remember at all. My regret was already suffocating, I squirmed but this increased his desire, kindling it to something which looked like near pain. Tight as I became, taut with tension I felt in exquisite detail his seed spilling inside of me, the throbbing twitches and I knew. I knew he was not to kill me and I knew I wanted to forget. 

He groaned, suddenly slithering down me. down between my legs.

"your bleeding." he panted and my heart charged a moment as he began to lick the cooling heat from between my legs. I whimpered feeling his probing tongue and heard him suddenly as well as if he'd spoken.

"What would you Dream sophie?"

"I don't want to dream,”

He stilled for a moment, like a viper stills.

“No dreams then.”

and then he sunk his teeth into my most tender of flesh between my legs.

The pain and shock of something almost like pleasure was so bright the stars glared like corona in my vision, blinding like a vision of white above me and I felt him sinking into me and my own heartbeat like the pulse of a tide.

* * *

**_May_ **

**_date unknown_ **

**_1897_ **

* * *

“Oh dear.” I was awoken suddenly by this pronouncement and it tasted of guile and coyness. I felt as if upon waking that he’d really been there a long time watching me. Perhaps he’d been here all along laughing at my distress.

That was the thought that coiled bright and violent into my conicousness as I saw him there with an expression that could be nothing but mock sympathy.

How long had I sat there? Holding that dress in my lap with many others? Stained and soiled, I among now the dirty laundry and dead. It was fitting. My eyes had long ago adjusted to the fading light without me realizing it for I had only noted a pleasant endless kind of absence not unlike sleep while I sat there. 

He leaned absently observing me leaning against the crate of one of his pets. The girl was at his feet, maggots still churning and working about her mouth.

“I really should have done a better job cleaning this up I know, you’ve only had me so preoccupied.” He said this as if it was a compliment. “Perhaps it was inevitable.” My mind was still buzzing from my dream, i felt hot and confused and ill and torn askew. The dresses in my lap. When I looked at them memories like bile crept up my throat and slashed the backs of my eyes.

“Why?” I demanded.

“Why what?”

“Why kill her, why _do this to me_?” I felt as if I was being split apart, my mind coming to pieces the fragments cutting me.

“You’ve lost time I know. It can be disconcerting.” this falsetto of kindness was unbearable and hot tears pricked my eyes as he took a step near and peered at me as if puzzling over a specimen gaguing something. I could not bare to look at him and as he moved to touch my I flinched.

Her eyes were open, watching us. He sighed and sat back on his heels.

“You said you wouldn’t be angry.”

“It was a Mercy, really. She would have eaten you up you know without a second thought.”

“You tortured her, kept them in boxes!” 

“Is that what your afraid of? That I’ll box you up.”

> _'Don't worry its not for_ **_you'_**

He told me so long ago as I watched him remove the gramophone from the box.

Understanding finally was reaching me, such a slow creature I was and I stared at him, his gently furrowed brow which considered me like one considers a weak or injured animal.

“What?” I asked stupidly, though I knew, suddenly sick, ice churned through my veins before what drove it had a name. I had forgotten this terror, this dread within me, it reached up strangling me suddenly and he saw my fear, my raw panic and his eyes softened even further with something almost like pity.

“Sophie, did you really think I was ever planning on letting you go?”

I stood, my legs like a gangly fawn, still holding the dress.

"Where are you going?" He asked as I used the table to move away.

"Away." said, a half whisper and he seemed to let me.

In the halls, whether by madness or his blood I found images of my father, stained like photo flashes in the halls. His own panicked and manic wanderings. I did not pause, but moved through them. Not knowing where I was going until I found myself somewhere familiar, though many shelves lay barren. Fitting I suppose as I wandered around the crates, vellum and sap in the air. Boxes.

_Darwin._

_Evolution._

_Compassion._

_Cruelty_

_Morality._

_Justine._

_Julliette._

I felt sick with words and yet I found myself there all the same.

> _‘Perhaps I’m just enjoying you as long as time permits_.’
> 
> ‘ _Such a remarkable constitution-’_
> 
> _‘-you know Sophie I rather think you’d make a fine companion with the right conditioning-’_

Had he ever lied?

No, clutching the green dress which dragged dusty now, between us I was the liar.

Five missing days accumulated like dirt grit beneath my nails. Five days festered like slivers beneath my skin. 

The tower. . . how quickly I’d given in.

How easily I forgot the blood he took. How deeply I slept those days and how In the evening he'd come to whisper the prose of _la fluer du mal_ which had sunk so deeply, deeper than tangible memory, so that it was more essence. The flavor of my own langor. Then, time times his own hunger had overcome him I'd woken to him within my bed. 

And half asleep I'd remember the feeling of him, and with it the keenness of longing. 

_' let me let me'_

_' yes,'_

Grateful even, begging to. . . 

_'please...'_

My father was bright and hot behind my eyelids, interchainging with the visage of the girl. The dead one with maggots writhing and her open eyes staring at me with pity.

Because she was free and I was taking her place.

In the library sick of heart I stared at a near empty crate.

_Maybe I should simply choose one and curl within to make it simpler._

I ran my finger along one contemplating this when I was rewarded for a bite of pain, sharp stinging like a wasp and withdrew to see a sliver driven into my index finger and winced and pinching it with my thumb to ebb the pain I got the urge to kick it. 

_Not this box_.

Then struggled not to laugh.

Then not to cry.

I failed in both endeavours and curled quite pitifully beside the crate with my back against one of those tall shelves and with my knees up I laughed until I cried my face buried in the silk of that bloodied emerald green dress. My ribs and head throbbing and my face growing hot and twisted painfully.

“You’ve taken everything!”  
How had I known he was there? Perhaps He was everywhere within this place.

_Perhaps he is just inside me._

“I don’t know who I am anymore, if my thoughts are even my own or if you’ve already taken that as well!” He knelt and I could not help but flinch and he paused before slowly touching my knee through the dress.

“Most people dream.” He told me, suddenly in the slow lull of contemplative conversation. “But you Sophie, you didn’t want to dream, _you_ wanted to forget.”

Any wounds that a lie could make are petty in comparison to the wounds a single truth might inflict.

My soul was infected with them and he was still speaking, as if he spoke to a child. I was a child to him, less than that maybe- a pet, a curiosity. _entertainment_.

“At first I didn’t understand your petty obsession with virtue, I realized each time I took you apart it another first, and we’ve enjoyed so many of those together haven’t we?”

“Please stop.” He clucked his tongue, a sound of pity or displeasure?

“Still resisting yourself. Justine or Julliete." There in his voice was both contempt and mirth. "Sophie it was never any contest. I knew what you were the moment I met you, just as your precious Lucy knows you-”

“No!” I wanted him to stop, to block him out, but though I could box my ears in his voice did not quiet, like worms, _maggots,_ seeking, _chewing_ , tunnelling.

“No! No always no!” He mocked, laughing and grabbing at me, he untangled me grabbing my face his forcing me to look into the shining dark of his eyes. Scorn like embers burning there.

“Why can’t you just admit it? Hm?” He demanded grabbing me by the shoulders as if to shake me. “You have every potential,” He said then, a queer fervor then to that amber, like madness.

"For what?" I needed to hear it, for it no longer to fester like a wound in my unconscious what I already knew but had not faced.

"You know what, you let me in Sophie, the first in four hundred years..." He was saying, eager almost to have out with it, a tenderness blooming in the fever- tender like the releif of puss from a wound. "You will be my _finest_ bride."

I realize now what I had never acknowledged previously, or consciously. That at the root of my passivity, was my acceptance of death. My peace with it. I stared at him, for the first time staring into the dark madness in his eyes and I fear-

Well I fear I lost my own.

I began to laugh, grabbing his collar, because if I didn't I might have ripped my own hair out in hysteria. The laugh quickly turned into a wail, just like the haunting howls that ripped through the castle, awning awful hollow noises.

_perhaps I am the castle, apart of it. apart of him._

_Just an echo left over from something that used to be alive._

“Sophie-” his voice darkened with warning, but I could not help myself. I clawed into the fabric of his shirt raking into his flesh below which left no marks and I thought as I saw that ' _There is nothing, this is nothing. like plaster. like stone, like dirt.'_

“You want me to be like you?” I asked, and lifted upon my toes, my teeth taking his lip. He groaned, a low aroused sound, his grip on my shoulders strong and he pushed his mouth into mine into my cutting teeth heedless, feeling nothing except his own desire. His thick and worming tongue caring not for how I snapped. 

He broke away, thickly, “You're already like me, that's why I know you're perfect Sophie.” 

I hated him. I bit his tongue again and he laughed into my mouth gathering me to him and allowing me to push him back so he lay prone on the floor with me at top him. But even from this position he asserted himself, his hands moving down to my hips, pulling his to mine and grinding. Arousal struck me keenly and I found myself wanting him as much as I despised him. I pulled his shirt until the buttons popped off scattering across the floor and exposing the milk white skin peppered with dark hair. He was laughing now and I rewarded him with a slap.

“Like you?!” I was repeating.

“Oh yes.” He worked his hand between us, between his legs freeing himself and ripped another garment which free - _another trophy for the chest?-_ so that he could plunge into me. He panted, his teeth sharpening his eyes gleaming from half hooded eyes as he tipped back his head as he was sheathed inside of me, moaning as he did . “So ready Sophie, your always so ready.” And I was, slick and wet and wishing I might hurt him I folded over attempting to sink my teeth into him. To bite his chest his nipple as he held my hips and fucked me from below. I was sore, sweet and aching, bruised inside.

“You’ll need better teeth than that my darling little _Julliet_.” he panted exposing his neck to me, my blunt teeth not even making a mark though my jaw ached with effort. They might have cracked had he not gripped me from my hair and pulled away, my gums bleeding filling my mouth with copper and iron and and making my mouth water.

He thrust into me as one stabs, sharp, _puncturing_ then slow before the steady powerful insertion which sent jerks through me. He held me suspended there, twisted up in his grip, his hungry black eyes on my throat, panting with each thrust. I saw nothing I had done had marked his dead body and despair was already marking my feverous rage which I had not the energy to hold long. 

_Not a mark_.

I was thinking about boxes,

He lowered his hand so he might stroke me, his strength allowing himself to with ease keep me twisted up, to manipulate me while he drove into me. there was that great feeling building. My knees ached against the ground, my body tight, denying him depth though he found it anyways. the tighter I was, the greater his pleasure upon penetration- and the greater my pain.

and yet I did not want to ease it. _should it not hurt?_ the Justine in me asked quietly, but it was my julliet that always knew the truth and whispered, _'You adore this pleasure- the ecstasy of agony! Your own resistance doesn't just give him pleasure but **you**. To be helpless and taken apart is the sublime acceptance, sublime permission without shame.'_

And there it was my trembling, weak 'submission' and his own and in the numbness, the shuddering void of what followed. And there the suffocation of eternity and suddenly it came to me.

_Reserata Carcerum._

and I looked upon him, already the briefness of pleasure was escaping him, his eyes opening, observing me, his bare chest empty of mark. empty of beating. empty of _all_.

"What did you say?" he asked, had I said it aloud? Did it matter? He looked up at me almost with a kind of docile innocence, the languor of pleasure upon him and I thought to the fresh reminder of that night on the tower, the boyish look in his eyes as he looked at the night sky and something knew overwhelmed me catching me off guard.

"Reserata carcerum." the words tasted like blood, my gums bleeding still, and he blinked, without understanding. “The prison without locks isn’t this place, _it's you_. Trapped forever in the tomb of your flesh.”

* * *

I know now that I had never seen him enraged before that moment. How quickly that langour became seething. We rose so violently I was only aware of being slammed for the impact of it, the great blow as my breath escaped me, crushed out of my lungs.

“Is that _pity_ in your face?” I was crying, and earnestly. Only the sorrow I had felt at the loss of my father, the awful death of the child compared to this. My tears were answer enough in his eyes. He withdrew, effectively flinging me back to the ground, where I knew the pain of the stones upon my knees and the vivid feeling of him spilling between my legs, trickling and cool before he took me by the hair, knotting his hand tight. 

I think I screamed so loud was the pain, braying like an animal without sense. 

“Stop!”

And, mindless, because the pain was so intense I begged.

“Please!” He began to drag me, and I was unable to rise though I tried, for he kept a hold of my hair as one holds the scruff of a dog at the height of his thigh. He was intent upon dragging me and began speaking almost casually to me as he did so.

“Each choice you’ve made has been your own, the yes’s, the no’s, even the choice to hide it all from yourself.” He dragged me, preventing me from rising or fully falling so that no matter what I did each pull was agony, the flesh of my knees being rubbed raw and bleeding as the wooden floors of the library became the cobbled stone of the greater castle halls. I babbled, incoherently, begging, pawing and clawing time an endless agony without mark except that it felt as an eternity.

He took me howling all the way back to the room, the one with the boxes, tearing the flesh of my thighs by dragging me up the stairs, my neck burning, hot as if the muscles were being torn from my shoulders.

“I thought a little change in scenery would be nice, hm?”

He said finally releasing me only when I was within the centre of the room I had not so long ago left. The chest open and spilling, the corpse of the girl so near that I felt the hum of flies near my cheeks and opened my eyes to see her. 

Finally I so close I recognized her.

She looked like Marianne Vasduva.

“Marianne.” I might have rasped a half gulp, without new pain the old pain burned hotter my thighs, my knees my feet, my hands and neck. 

“Elaina actually- her Aunt. She made the mistake of inviting me inside. A little like you Sophie, though she was never _willing_. Perhaps you could have been darling sisters.” I closed my eyes and tried to twist away though already I felt my neck stiffening, swelling. The stench was awful but his hand swiftly grabbed my face and shoved it back to the side. so close we might have kissed and I fought not to retch.

“Look at her.” He commanded laying on my back, he forced my head back to the side, “All eaten up- bloated, rotting.” he punctuated his words with the lifting of my skirts. My horror mounting. I flinched at the rawness of flesh and clasped my knee’s together. Elaina watched me with blank quiet eyes. He ran his tongue over my raw rubbed flesh inducing a wave of heated prickles and a kind of numbness like ice. “Is that what you want Sophie? Really what you want?”

“She’s free.” My own strength surprised me. He’d kissed the pain out of both of my knees but at my answer I knew there would be no more relief. “You’re pain in comparison in _infinite_ . Hers ended. You said it yourself, it was a _Mercy_.”

I could see effected him like a lancet to the wound of his tainted tattered soul, his face livid. I was quaking, some kind of shock perhaps coming over me. I began to beg mistaking this for some possibility of hope, or perhaps I was simply mad and desperate.

“I gave to you freely, please let it end! Please give me that same mercy.”

“That same mercy?” He repeated and I saw the rage cool, a somehow worse look there, an _absence_ and dread warned me.

He grabbed me from the front breast of my corset and pulled me to my feet and he said simply to me:

“Have it your way Sophie.” 

I understood as he opened the door of the box, sliding the latch open and struggled weakly against his grip. His smile was pure malevolent satisfaction.

“No, please-”

“You said ‘that _same_ mercy’ well, here it is.” He said and pushed me inside. I fought pathetically, my nails tearing at the opening, sending fresh pain through me as he stuffed me into the dark hole, babbling begging the entire while. “See how you like my ‘ _mercy_ ’ if that's really what you desire.” 

He shut the door and I screamed, a loud noise that likely made only a dull whisper from without. I know because he spoke loudly, ensuring I’d hear him through the sound of my own suffocating fear through the door.

“ _You are right Sophie, you did give yourself to me and now-"_ He laughed, " _I just so happen to have a free box in which to keep you._ ”

I batted against the door. “Please I made a mistake, please don’t leave me here!!” I screamed shamelessly, feeling smothered in the stagnant mouldering darkness. My eyes stretched wide but unable to see. I heard him moving away, for he sounded more distant when he cried back cruelly.

“ _Consequences Sophie, there are always consequences._ ”

And I was left finally alone with my own in the dark.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Juicy enough, and back on track I think :)


	12. In the darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophie ruminates in the dark and makes a decision.

**_Sophie Harker's Diary_ **

**_In the darkness_ **

* * *

In the dark it was that dream, that one which drove me to seek distraction that rose again unbidden. I do not fear to write it now what it was I saw, there in the dark, and that night of the Covenant sleeping in the tent with the gypsies.

* * *

I was in an office.

It was a place I knew well, the panelling, the tall intimidating shelves and a face that would have been familiar if the hair was only grayer, the lines deeper.

_“Then it is settled. . . you are a good man Mr. Harker, better than I. You’ll go far in the Firm, with or without my word. Now please, ask for Madeline to join us.” He said looking ashen, remote. I knew that expression well for he wore it often in my presence._

_My father- or I turned to the door and there she was._

_My mother stood waiting upon the other side._

_It was like looking in a mirror. She stood dressed in her maids clothes her hands clasped and her head down._

_“Maddy-” I- or he said. For it was the unmistakable voice of my father which spoke through lips that felt as if they were my own. I felt then his love for her, his tenderness, and his despair. She entered the room and closed the door behind her. Mr. Westenra sighed as the door shut and stood. Was it my own envy and hatred I felt as Mr. Westenra stood and took my mothers hand or my own?_

_“It seems my dear your trust has not been misplaced. Mr. Harker has agreed to save us both from shame and ruin and with my blessing you will marry-”_

* * *

That is the dream which brought me to my excursion. The one I feared, but now could not escape. That my father may not be my father, the one I would have called lover- my half sister in blood. and all those fears I was raised with, the whispers of my young mothers pregnancy, the marriage a sham to escape scandal.

So much rings too true to deny, the real reason I had long been welcome at the Westenra estate- had her mother too known? she had always been kind to me, it was Mr. Westenra who had been at all times aloof to me even to his death. but that had been simply the mans nature.

I know not what is true now, what is not, I burn with the desire to know even now when thirst is a wound in my throat.

* * *

There is no sense of time in that place, only endlessness in the dark marked by the exhaustion after I wept all the tears I could and the bitter stirrings of painful throat burning hunger which turned my stomach into a clenched fist. Soon a strange senseless feeling began as if I was not sitting but drifting untethered. I dreamt some, of the vision, of Lucy, of my father. 

Sometimes I woke warm and aroused as if he’d been there. Touching me in the dark.

It occurred to me that I might have died, except it seemd that if one was to be dead there would be less pain.

_Unless your in hell_

The worse was not the dreaming, or the pain, it was the desperation which worked its way suddenly, like bright streaks of madness.

_If he lets me out I’ll be good, I won’t make him angry ever again._

My mind would run with this, surreal, and strange intrusive thought grabbing hold of me only for clairity to break the fever like a wave leaving me pathetic and bewildered and sick feeling, and though I wanted to cry in those moments I found i had no tears left

I thought I dreamt of finding a pathway into the dungeon. Holding a lantern high the light scattering on boxes piled upon boxes, stacked too high even for the light to reach beneath the castle.

 _Where the gypsies pull the boxes_. But these were smaller boxes, crates. I wrenched them open, finding only the dead. 

_Were these my predecessors?_

Not my voice.

Not my thought.

_Papa._

In the dark suddenly I did not feel alone for a moment.

Then a noise.

Intrusive, close.

_Real._

_It’s the door!_

Like a fawn I emerged. Weak. I expected him there but found myself alone except for a lit lamp.

Then there on the table my diary.

Did he read it?

Did it matter?

Dates I'm finding are meaningless, my entries ever more punctuations of my own consciousness not witheld by hour or by any number.

It hurts to write, three of my nails came free of my flesh entirely but what does pain matter? I’ve decided it will end one way or another, but first I will have my answers. Have I ever been Sophie Harker, or have I always been Sophie Westenra, or has that too been another illusion? I must know.

* * *

**_May_ **

**_1897_ **

**_Evening_ **

* * *

I have found my way back to my room. I have cleaned myself best i can and have found here a dress. I do not intend to wear it. Though brused and bloodied and moving slowly I will not cease. I will wear only that of which was my own, my old travel cloths that i had left that I had not thought appropriate for a Count. almost funny now. they seem so much larger on me, ill fitting, like I'd stolen them from another girl entirely. but they are mine, Sophie Harker's, or Sophie Westenra, they _are mine_. 

There is a bottle of oil that smells of the Lucy's scent- gereniums. It seems strange to think she may be my sister, yet perhaps that is right. I think I’ve always felt certain that of the two of us she was the stronger, the more resilient and that the provocation of her memory in turn strengthened me. Is there not always a stronger sister and a weaker? Lucy never quailed, and I too was tired of quailing, perhaps it is less her memory that has given me strength, but shared blood.

Would she love me less if she knew? or more?

I cannot think of it.

But what I must have is an answer. I must know. Is she, or isn't she?

I do not intend to wait for him, I do not intend to rest. Wearing the last of what is mine, the shreds of it now that I am clean and my hair braided with the blue silk ribbon taken from the door- for I do not expect to return I will go now downstairs.


	13. Last Supper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophie Harker confronts the Count, only to find her puppet strings being pulled.

**_Sophie Harker's Diary_ **

**_The last Supper_ **

* * *

He was setting the table when I arrived. I believe he was not expecting my presence so immediately and he stopped to look up from his task of setting the silverware with a hesitant expression uncertain it seemed what to expect from me.

“Good evening.” I said.

“Sophie.” he looked strangely- repentant, or reticent maybe. His gaze dipping his hand moving to touch his brow after he set the fork. I continued from the stairs towards him, my feet bare, I was without stocking for I had none nor did I have really any undergarments so my skirt and blouse were strange fitting upon me. But it was the first time I felt myself in a long time. Instead of speaking directly to me he lifted the silver dish.

“Suckling pig.” He said and stepped back to pull out my chair for me. "I wasn't sure if you'd be down so I was ready to bring it up to your rooms if you'd prefer it there."

“Kindness again is it?” I asked coldly, in side me there was a waif shrieking ‘ _don’t make him angry, don’t make him angry!’_ I hated this, and this hatred made me angry, the shrill fear fading, pushed away, back into the whole I’d emerged from. In her place was a kind of emptiness, a deserted place.

“I dislike how we parted last- come sit-” He released the chair his hands up in a relenting posture stepping back as if I was a bristling cat. I resisted throwing the silver lid at him but composed myself and stepped closer to my seat but did not take it. 

“Do you?” I asked and forced my anger back like stuffing cotton down my throat, though it choked me. The piglet gleamed repulsively. It smelt… ripe, somehow and my stomach churned. He’d picked up the wine not even feigning the need for a bottle opener he was twisting the cork.

“Please lets not make this harder than it has to be.” He was reading hostility in me, which I could not deny I felt, but it was not then my intention. I needed to keep my composure.

“No- I only think you might make it up to me.” He had not been expecting this and I felt a little well of pride at my own steadiness, my own directness. 

The wine cork popped and a vinegar like scent escaped the bottle. No doubt he would keep face expecting me to act as if I enjoyed every swallow. _Bastard_. And I might, if only he’d give me what I desired. Because once I had it I would be free. 

I had to restrain the gallop that stirred at the thought, yes, _free free free._

Nothing between mattered, there would never be freedom again for me, I knew now. Unless I took it.

But there was one last matter. One thing I could not part without knowing. The Count waited with interest for my request.

“What would that be?”

“My father, since-” I hesitated, what- the ‘ _orgy_ ’ was too profane, the ‘ _gypsies_ ’ to general. Finally I found my word. “Since the _covenant_ I’ve been having strange visions, flashes of things.”

“That is an effect I believe I warned you about.”

“Yes, of course, but is there- is there a way to have _more_?” 

“See something you like Sophie? Or something you don’t?” He asked, the passivity in his face not long before the wicked coy smile returned in a way I did not like.

“That would be my business I should think.” I eyed him wondering if he would make me beg, just that as he watched me with his own steady unwavering eyes in an expression I couldn't quite read. Was he pleased or merely _tickled_ by what I was asking?

“I see you’re quite set on it aren’t you?” My eyes narrowed and he laughed, gesturing apologetically again with open palms as if I might lunge across the table to choke him. “Well alright, then” he said and I felt creeping uncertainty at the quickness of this. _But then perhaps_ , a part of me considered weakly, _he does desire the return of our companionship as before?_ He moved to my chair and sat in my seat, patting his lap inviting me and my guts twisted for his game and gain became clear. “Come then.” He said slapping his thighs soundly. “This time you’ll take it from the tap, its _stronger_ that way, at least for me it is.” He said with a coy sort of wink, his mouth curling.

Though I had not been reduced to begging this was somehow equally demeaning, but I'd done worse, had worse done to me and rather enjoyed most of it really when I thought about it.

When I took my place I knew I would feel him grow aroused with my right hip against his groin, just as I knew he would and this sent a flutter through me despite myself. There would be no smothering this which like hunger seemed to simply arise when provoked, and why deny it? I’d done so much of that already, I had dug my own grave with my lies. No more. 

I shifted instead, placing my hands on his shoulders to take the place most comfortable to me and felt already he was beginning to stir, his hand flexed and his eyes sparking, he was adoring this, every second of it. I sat now at least a head taller than he, and my breasts at such a level he could easily enjoy them with a tip of his chin. But he did not, he held himself steady, eyes upon my face until I sat back, more eye level his arm securing me from behind the other leaving my hip to move to his neck were he made a gash. It was a strange thing to see- him bleeding, how his flesh parted like butter to his nail.

“You’ll have to keep the wound open with your tongue.” He told me, mouth twitching again as he licked his thumb clean. The fire danced its ambiance bright behind him, but casting him in shadows. He was growing hard against my thigh then, his had returned to my hip and he shifted his hips, moving gently against me, before I might lose my nerve I stooped to his neck and opened my mouth.

Undiluted from Slivovitz it was thick and cool, earthen but not repugnant. I might have gagged by reflex at the texture but I had already swallowed and found my stomach giving a watery ache of something like pleasure.

His hands tightened about me. His hum a vibration through us, tickling my tongue which prickled, keeping the tear spread. I sucked, enjoying the effect though it was not the goal of the enterprise, for he swelled very strongly at my thigh, his grip tightening about me and a heady rush overtook me. 

I had thought it entirely the effect of the Slivovitz- that rush, but I found myself overcome, though this time in triplicate for I drew very quickly a second mouthful and swallowed.

 _“It's stronger that way, at least for me it is”_ His words echoed, but not my memory, strangely it felt as if it was _his_ memory. He was nuzzling against my own neck and I felt acutely his own hunger like an echo of my body prickling in anticipation. His hips rocked. 

I closed my eyes feeling as if entering a great still lake. Feeling the cold tepid water move around me, making room for me as I took more. I felt the stinging needles of his teeth at my breast and cared not because as I looked into the lake below I saw faces, and not just faces but memories almost tangible to me.

For an instant fear clamoured up my throat, the noise of his suckling reaching me his hand up my, already he’d eagerly pulled himself free. Had the rush of pleasure not struck me, driving out the clamoring fear I might have broken away entirely but as he sheathed himself inside me I rolled my hips, moving my leg through the arm of the chair, able to reach the floor by my toes and push him deeply inside my hips scooping. He panted, sucking licking and snarling at my breast while I rode him. I struggled then not to lose myself in that pleasure and loose what I sought and refastened myself, sucking harder and returning to that place feeling it draw me in, my body sinking into it deeper and deeper. 

I expected my fathers memories,

Not his.

* * *

 _Bodies on pikes, groaning writhing_ **_alive_ **.

 _‘No, not living.’_ I reeled around to see him on a great black beast the very same beasts that galloped in the fields only adorned in cloths and colors, banners unfamiliar to me. His face to was different- beard long but those bright unmistakable eyes. ‘ _A plague brought to my land. The only surefire way to kill them you know, though I prefer it to take some time.’_ He said and then as if seeing me for the first time he squinted. _‘You shouldn’t be here- why are you here?_ ’ 

* * *

It was like being shoved suddenly, violently. Until I realized I was in fact, off his lap and upon the floor, his face his mouth bright with my blood, he held his neck with a bewildered look as if I’d injured him.

“How did you do that?” 

In my mind it felt as if something great was pressing in upon me, pushing, pushing behind my eyelids, as sickness in the stomach pressues up the throat, so this feeling threatened to push out my eyes. The walls around me seemed to flicker and throb. I felt all at once suffocated.

“Sophie?” He said, but strangely, _distantly_. 

I needed to get away. I needed to get out. 

Had his blood given me strength?

I seemed to be moving, pushing open the great doors without feeling to my body, it was dark out and this did not seem to matter to me. My legs felt heavy and strange below me.

I was moving through the forest- or was it memories of moving through the forest? 

Pain lanced through my face but it was but a branch whipping me, as I heedlessly scrambled through the dark and tangled wood. It was eclipsed with the swelling song of the blood.

There was a moment where I realized I was not moving through trees but great pikes, leaning against one I drew my hand away sticky with the thick blood and excrement that had drained down it.

_I am gods warrior._

Then.

 _I am gods cursed_. 

I fell, fell through the treeline, which had become tree’s again after all. I could not see where I was going, I tumbled over dirt and moss and stone, my feet bare and I suspected cut and bloodied and I collapsed near the edge where there was a cliff. 

The moon was bright enough and big that I might see the void below which I knew the _Agres_ lay. 

_The river she threw herself from_.

Who?

_A dark haired girl, turkesh. Too much like my captors._

Then another memory. Distinct, different, dizzying. Not his. I heard, finally my fathers voice, calling distantly, despairing in my mind. 

**_‘What have I condemned her to?’_ **

“Papa!” I heard my own voice cry but my eyes were elsewhere, though my feet caught on stones I felt the earth moving beneath me violently. I was in a carriage. Yet I still felt the earth below me, my consciousness filtered through layers.

* * *

_The carriage was cold, and almost immediately the horses were moving, surging really, my mind bouncing along behind it, trapped in the hollow halls, her cry still reaching me, repeating helplessly calling me, ‘Papa papa!’ I can not allow this to occur! This beast, he would not so easily allow me freedom whatever he’d vowed, whatever my child so naively believed. If I lived she would be condemned to protect me, I know my course then. The only course that might free her-_

_Forgive me Mina, Forgive me Sophie… I am not so strong to bear the burden of these horrors, these secrets, better I be removed from it all and perhaps free my daughter from the burden of my weakness_

_The carriage didn’t slow, I was weak but still I managed to get the door thrown open. My bones and flesh jarring. The darkness swept it all away, the ground giving away to the void of a dark cliff which would stretch all the way down to the river Arges._

_Before I could question my resolution I gave my last prayer, my last leap- and lunged._

_There was a moment of freedom, of triumph._

_But then I was arrested. My arm jerking within its socket causing me to cry out which clashed with the scream of wind._

_His face was stark above me. The horses still rushed onwards, he must have leapt as I had and caught me before I escaped his grasp._

_“What do you think your doing?” he asked the monster writhing beneath the face of a man, a mockery to god._

_“I’m going where you cannot use my flesh against me!”_

_“Is that so Johnny?” He seemed to consider this, “Our deal was that I would see you to safety.” The sleeve was beginning to rip._

_“Then your vow is broken and you’ll hold no bonds over her.” I declare triumphantly, the fear a kind of agitation inside me._

_“Don’t be stupid Johnny-”_

_And the sleeve tore. And the next thing I felt was the crash of cold. Of being turned and churned, of darkness…_

_And then of light._

_Human cries._

_“Eh! Domule! Eh Domule!”_

* * *

The memory broke and I found myself on that precipice standing when low growl emerged from behind me and I swayed, like my father about to fall. Only suddenly something was taking ahold of my skirts and pulling so that I hit the ground so hard my breath left me. I flailed and thought perhaps I had hit the creature for suddenly it drew back with a low yelp and I saw a wolf had in fact been my rescuer. I should have realized.

Reality was somewhat more unexpected and horrific as I turned to see for the moon was huge and bright in the sky providing cold white light. The wolves maw opened, his teeth gleaming as he spread his jaws wide, wider than natural and a wet snapping I could hear emerging. the worst was its eyes. rolling and wide with pain, _it was alive_. and then something wet gleaming seemed to come from the back of the throat- extending over the tongue. something gleaming upon it- parts of it spreading becoming- _fingers_. the silver I saw a _ring_ I knew. reaching, reaching me from the wolfs broken body to take my ankle.

I think I screamed, or perhaps it was merely the wind keening in my own ears.

The head split open a strange awful cry of death escaping the wolf still living and twitching through this satanic mockery of birth. Bloodied fingers from his second hand curled about the inner cheek of it pushing outwards- rending the beasts head open from its maw and something slick gleaming as if within a birthing sack began working its way through the throat of the beast which tore open spilling its inhabitant which seemed to grow from gleaming worm like translucence, enlarging.

The wolfs head became a crown on his head the lower jaw dangling as the rest of the beasts torso had become and empty sack torn to make way for his torso which was still half sheathed and bursting out, morphing as something morphs from a crysallis. He drew his hand scraping the muck from his face panting like a wolf himself and flinging slew to the earth with dangerously glittering eyes setting upon me. And through this I could make not a sound. I realized then how far I had gotten from the castle for I saw it outlined in the cold colors of moonlight on the horizon. Had I really gone so far? Had I run? 

“Not a dog person?” He asked, and flashed me a smile. I'd like to think I managed an appropriate response.

I kicked him with my bare and dirty foot, feeling the slippery icor of his face. 

“You killed him!” I shrieked, hurting my heel rather landing the blow, he turning his cheek to it. I tried to scramble away, away to the edge. Was it the same edge my father went to?

“Where do you think your going?” Dracula snarled, pulling me again down when I fought to rise, rocks bit into my spine through the dress. 

“I suppose to join him. You have _s-_ seem to have a _habit_ of losing people over cliffs don’t you!” I sneered back and this time he caught my foot, his nails biting into me causing me to howl out in earnest pain.

“And how do you know that, _how could you possibly know that_?” He took another grip and wrenched me down, half crawling atop of me. 

“You tell me,” and his name came in its tongue. The tongue I seemed to know as well as English. “ _Tepes.” impaler_. He gripped me, his face contorting and I spat in it, my mouth still tangy with his blood, or perhaps it was dirt. It flecked over his savage face and I fought, managing to twist to my belly, attempting to get out. Perhaps to hurtle myself over the edge. He only grabbed me from behind, his hand at my middle.

“Your certain he’s dead?” He asked. “Because I’m not Sophie,”

“What does that mean? _YOU_ _let_ him go! You tricked me, you _lied_ to me.”

“No, I said the last time I saw him he was alive,” I didn't even know if this was true anymore or care.

“You were never intending on letting him live!” I accused him and he did not feign to disagree.

“No, which Is why it's so important I know he’s really gone.”

“The dream was a lie wasn’t it?” I asked, feeling the truth of it already, the office, the feelings. . . It had all been too perfect. why had I not seen it before? The gleaming lure.

“I can make you dream when I want to Sophie, when its convenient, I wasn’t expecting you to take to it so quickly I thought it would take a few days for you to recover after our little fight. I have so enjoyed being surprised by you, but I can see there isn’t much left is there? Never enough _time_. If I’d had more time with good old Johnny boy I would have felt it myself. I wouldn't have needed you to do this for me. I tried to introduce it to you gently, and now-” He put his hand over my mouth and I tasted his blood again. I let out a muffled scream of frustration, attempting to wrench his hand away but his strength was an irrefutable vice and with his other hand he forced my jaw open, threatening with the pressure to break it.

“There are far more **creative** ways I might make you swallow.” He said until I succumbed rather than break my jaw. “Now think of _dear old daddy_. Can you do that?” I didn’t want to, but it was like being asked not to think of a pink elephant, when suggested one should not. "If he's alive you'll see it, You'll know it." He was saying somewhat distantly to my ears.

I felt too the helping hand of his will forcing my mind directing me in a way he'd not yet done. I swallowed twice and was finally released gasping and blinking. 

Blinking into a room I'd seen before. One I’d glimpsed through the tent of the gypsies. Of a room with cobbled stones and a iron bed frame and a little man inside it.

A cross hung on the wall and a flickering candle light showing a small lump beneath covers that were shifting, a face below blinking owlishly from below.

 _‘_ _Sophie?'_ it squeaked.

I struggled to shake myself free of the dream, or perhaps the memory, but Dracula remained behind me, his face now blank, watchful, still half sheathed from the waist down within the wolf. 

“You see something don’t you?” I tried to shake my head but I couldn't help but look at him, at his shape beneath the covers my heart tumbling,

 _‘Sophie ?’_ He repeated sitting suddenly straighter, his hand shaking as if he was two score older than I knew him to be. And he had aged since I last saw him. The next breath I drew was half a sob and I covered my face attempting to hide him from my sight, but he was still there, behind my closed eyes, still watching me with owlish fear and horror.

‘ _No, it c-can’t be you, it’s just another nightmare. A-n-nother nightmare like all the others-’_ He said, bitterly, his feet finding their way the the floor and pressing his face into his hands as I did, but he seemed as capable of ridding himself of me as I could of he.

“You see him don’t you?” ' _You can’t lie to me.'_

“No!” I exclaimed anyways and he laughed. Our running joke.

“Ask him where he is: say _daddy_ -” His will crashed upon me like a hand working at my throat.

“ _Daddy-”_

_“Where.”_

_“_ Where.”

“ _Are.”_

_“Are.”_

_“_ You.”

“ _You.”_

 _'You're not real, you're not real_!” He sobbed into his hands and seeing his heart break bolstered my strength.

“Stop it! Don't!” I said, finally able to speak myself, but this too my father heard and it caused him to look up. Blinking as if seeing me truly and believing his eyes.

“ _He’s there isn’t he? Is he hurting you? You look hurt.”_ How did he see me? As i was? Laying upon a floor, torn and bloodied?

“What is it, what is he saying?” He grabbed my neck and I cried out as he twisted my face to look at him and I struggled to keep my gaze from his. “I’m trying to be good and save all that precious blood of yours. . . but I will come in there if I must.”

I met my fathers gaze, knowing that I could not prevent this.

“Papa! He's trying to find you! Don’t tell him, you mustn't tell him where you are-” I cried out as he bite deeply into my shoulder, creating a fresh wound and heard my father too distantly scream in alarm or perhaps despair. 

Maybe simply terror.

For next I opened my eyes he was staring not at me but as if he could see _him._

“Hello Johnny, there you are.” He panted half grinning. 

“No! No! You can’t be here! It’s not possible.” My father scrambled back, kicking the sheets back. 

“I assure you it's quite possible, now where exactly are we? no need to be coy Johnny.” He said smiling and sweeping his gaze around the room, he stilled suddenly at a place behind the top of my head and I twisted. 

Jesus upon the crucifix hung upside down.

“Let me guess somewhere _religious_ , a _church_ perhaps?”

“Don’t tell him!” I yelled, desperate.

“I won’t, I won’t!” 

“No?” Dracula hummed. “Then whatever will we do with our time together. . ? I suppose we might catch up, you know I never had the chance to thank you for leaving me with _such_ a delightful bit of entertainment.”

“Don’t touch her!” It was agony to hear my fathers voice crack so desperately, so helplessly.

“Oh, it's a little late for that I’m afraid, and you’d be surprised I think, just how much she enjoyed it. Gets it from her mother I imagine?”

“Stop it!” I fought him, my as my dress was torn free. Torn as it was in the tower, torn as he pulled my bodice free of my breasts to sup before the fire. I struggled to cover myself.

“No- please don’t.” I begged and my father howled, clutching his head as if he could see despite closed eyes. He was going to take me there in front of him. savagely if he must. He would take pleasure in it, such great pleasure, ensheathed and enshrined in the body of the wolf, grotesque and profane.

“No _stop_!”

“Tell me and I’ll stop.” He said panting, with an awful expression fixed upon his face, not of pleasure I had imagined but rather a kind of grim determination. I slapped him, risking exposing my breasts and grabbed and slapped at him until he fastened me by my wrists and forced them down, pressing his body as he did down my body, slinking to lower his face to the exposed flesh, the wolf like a deformed cloak hanging from him in slippery tatters. He the image of the dark barbarian and likely I the innocent maiden to be taken. His hands pulled down my dress mercilessly exposing me inch by inch to my father.

“Please just stop! I’ll tell you I’ll tell you!”

My own shout was a shock even to me.

“Don’t you Dare! Don’t you dare make it all for nothing.” I twisted to see his stark face and his eyes fixated on mine and I saw in them the precipice of madness. Dracula snarled at me freeing me finally of the fabric.

My flesh was bright in the moonlight, my bones sharp beneath my flesh. 

“Nooo,” Came my father's low groan. “I can’t Sophie, I can’t bare it!”

“Where are you Johnny? Tell me and I might just give her a quiet death after all. No box.” I sucked in half a breath, pain welling in my chest and his eyes capturing mine. This was a truth.

A promise that everything would end. 

Forsake my father and it would all be as it always should have been.

“Hungary- I’m in Hungary-” He began stammering. 

I grew still, quiet. My choice, it had always been my choice. Then as it was now I need only be silent and let it all end, end as it always should have ended. 

Instead I spoke. The quiet inside me, rather than without.

“Is Mina there?” I asked making myself.

“M-mina-?” Father intoned hesitantly. Dracula had lowered his head to my breast to, enigmatically draw his tongue over my flesh lewdly, attempting to draw me to squirm and writhe with discomfort. To play his game. At my question he paused looking up at me.

“Yes papa _Mina_ , have you **had** her yet?” I asked crudely, coldly. Father blinked at me, suddenly uncertain again. “Does she still smell like Wisteria? maybe when I'll see here she feed me like a proper mama, tell us where you are papa-”

“Sophie.” Dracula stopped a warning utterance and I laughed in his face, feeling it crack though tears threatened to overflow and I grabbed his icor slicked head and burning my fingers in his hair I pulled my mouth to mine kissing with my teeth. He pushed my face back with a strong hand to my jaw attempting to salvage the damage I’d done.

“Johnny-” he attempted but my father had risen his head shaking.

“Thats not my daughter! My Sophie would never-” The words struck a blow and I pressed my face into his neck my arms warped around him as a lover only to his hide my despair.

“Get out of my head! You beasts! Get out of my head DEVILS!” 

* * *

Was it his scream that broke our connection? His own will? I felt the tentative snap of the connection as tangible as my innocence tearing had been and was left quaking. 

I hardly managed to turn my head quickly enough to the side to vomit. 

“That was clever Sophie,” he said, rather quietly and a blank look of pity was on his face and I began to cry. He sighed and touched me, how could he touch me so tenderly? I felt hot and cold at once. 

“Forgive me.” He said suddenly.

“You would demand even that wouldn’t you?” I said my body shivering and shuddering and his offering no warmth. 

“Yet it's the one thing I cannot take.” He said, beginning to push himself up, to rise, he offered me his hand but I batted it away. Despite knowing I was only inviting more pain.

“Good, because it's the one thing you do not **_deserve_**.” I said turning and began to push my self up weary. He followed I think, until he knew I was not about to throw my self over the cliff. I'd lost several more nails, fighting him? or perhaps lodged into trees. I don't know. there was a dreadful thudding inside me.


	14. With the gypsies/My last Entry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophie recounts her stay with the gypsis, and records her last entry.

_**Sophie Harkers Diary** _

_**With the gypsies** _

* * *

Though I never really looked behind me I knew he was there though I did not see him again. I somehow found my way back to the gypsy encampment within the inner castle walls, holding my dress by shreds together. Wounded I knew from the pain, but I could not have told you were my wounds began. I hurt all over. Katsia gave a little cry when she saw me and it was only when she threw her arms around me I gave way to my weakness.

I was hot, and cold all over she spoke in hurried tones, words a blur to me, but with the sense of fear and concern. An influenza seemed to be taking me, perhaps consumption. Yes, i was consumed so should it not be so?

" _My lady!"_ She kept saying with all that sweetness and urgency, " _My lady!_ "

I found sleep in Katsia's arms and have woken intermittently ever since feeling her tender minstrations, her cloth, the broth she brings me sometimes the only thing I can keep down. 

* * *

He arrived once I know of which I can record be cause he left me my journal I believe upon this visit. I woke to their whispers, not always now unintelligible to me as I knew they should be, and could see through my bleary eyes the crone was with me, Katsia near touching a cloth to my head expression uneasy and downcast her glow almost golden in the light which flickered for me as I shifted between absences. He was the large shadow of the room, the old one speaking up to him.

‘ _We thought you knew.’_ She held something. Something large glowing amber in the light. A jar of amber and something within it. Something twisted, deformed and black.

His hand lay on it, strangely tenderly. Obscuring what i might have been able to see, not that I would have made sense of it then. 

He turned to me and Katsia moved away. I think they left, or perhaps when I am with him I always feel as if we are alone. His touch made me shiver. Making me realize how hot I was. 

_I’m dying._ I thought clearly. And then, _why doesn’t he look pleased then?_

And he didn’t he looked gutted. Wounded.

Almost human.

“I’ve made a terrible mistake,” he said and he kissed my brow and pressed something to my chest and I felt myself pushed back within the waves of unconsciousness.

* * *

The thing I suppose was my diary. Left here for me and tools to write. How considerate of him.

I didn’t die. For clearly I am writing this now. Recounting as I have the strength to which comes in little bursts.

There are times I am relieved to feel somewhat better, and then in turn bitterly hateful. For what purpose do I survive? To be changed? To become monstrous? To be used as a pawn to kill that which I loved in life.

I think often of the jar and amber. 

What was it there inside? Twisted like a piece of driftwood. And the smell. . . it had smelled like that ambrosia, that anointment oil.

How tenderly he touched it. 

_I thought you knew.’_

_‘I’ve made a terrible mistake.’_

I have only time to consider what this can mean and no answers come. I am tired. I look forward only to Katsias warmth, her presence.

* * *

I often dream of being my father, I am entering the bowels of the castle and I hear their scratching murmurs there, their quiet calls and begging voice. _Kill me_. They say as I pass.

I know in this dream where he sleeps in the dark. I can smell the earth on the gypsies in the day in the camps, even on Katsia sometimes. This is the place they up earth for him, boxes upon boxes of it from those very bowels, working like miners everyday.

But some dreams are strangely sweet. Of spring grass and clover, I nap it seems all day and deeply into the dusk.

* * *

_**My last entry** _

I admit I have not all been honest in my writings. Though I can hardly trust my mind, I fear still to be betrayed by my papers, but this is my last entry and so all may be honest.

There was one dream I did not dare to put to my pages.

The dream with the light.

* * *

In the beginning it is very distant the light as if I am very far away and when I see it, distantly comes the voice.

 _‘Sophie, Sophie Harker, can you hear me?’_ And I do not know this voice, it is that of a woman, to be sure but strangely accented making her voice sharp yet flat in some of her English. 

“ _Reach for the light Sophie. Move to the light_.’ it tells me and I try to, though I’ve lost the sense of my limbs i see the light and I focus upon it and I find myself growing nearer to it. 

And then I am there staring at a candle before my face and I am not alone.

“Sophie, can you hear me?” It asks.

“Yes,” I say, only to find it is not my voice that answers but my fathers. This disturbs me. “Is my father here?” I say and then I am fearful, _'has Dracula found father_?' and I exclaim: “He can’t be here, he’s looking for him! He’s using me to find him!”

“Its alright Sophie, you and he are quite safe for now I assure you.” Came the woman's assuaging reply. “But we do not have much time.”

“Time for what?” still it was my father speaking. “Where is my father, why can i hear him but not myself?” It is a surreal and disconcerting feeling to hear my words spoken through him so perfectly as if he knew my mind.

“He’s here Sophie, he is safe.” came another voice, this one familiar. I turned and it was Mina staring at me, her long hair golden and pretty around her face. She smiled sadly and took my hand only- it wasn’t my hand. It was an old hand, a man's hand, one with long fingers I knew so well, fingers I used to watch tapping anxiously, a hand that used to hold my own.

“There is no time for this, Sophie I need you to pay attention, look at me.” I did, to see the sharp faced woman with brunette hair tied sharply back from her face.

“Who are you?”

“You may call me Agatha, you are currently inhabiting your fathers body- don’t ask me how it works, it only seems as if Dracula has created some link between you. One he has intended to use against your father, but **_I_ **intend to use against _**him**_.” She concluded this brightly with a kind of fire of pride in her face at this.

“Use it against him?” I repeated and she sighed. “How am I to know this isn’t him? He makes me forget, he’s made me see things, for all I know your another of his fabrications,”

“He has fed from you I assume?”

“And I from him.” Mina made a little noise of horror, but the woman barely blinked. 

“Are you undead? Do you have a heartbeat?” I thought about that seriously for a moment.

“I feel a heartbeat." I concluded, but a little sure of it. "I am dying I think.” I admitted, this seemed after all more certain. 

“Well if you do not want it to be in vain- no pun intended- pay attention and we very well might be able to destroy Dracula.” 

* * *

I have not, I suppose you can say, been as weak as I have made out and it is a simple thing to obtain- a sharp piece of wood, a hammer- I am armed by my fathers memories to that place, and with your wisdom too that you have shared with me. The last request you made of me I have seen my opportunity today to fulfil. The gypsies take their 'lords' letters and here at the end I have copied the names and address of those I could find in the satchel and now will bind this book and have it sent to the place you spoke of- I only hope you wisely have not entrusted my mind with the address of any of your kin. As my mind has been open to you, so I have been far more open to him. Be wary Agatha, my friend for if I fail he will come for you and if I succeed, I hope you will come to me if my pain has not ended.

Though we have never met Agatha you have become that candle light you called me to, my sister, in a way and I pray we never meet in this life.

Protect my Lucy, my father and Mina.

And thank you.

_-Sophie Harker_

_1897_

* * *


	15. June 1st 1897

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> June 1st 1897  
> A package is received.  
> A ship leaves the port of Varna

**June 1st 1897**

Yesterday I received telegram by my friend a post had been received and was waiting me. Today I was able to retrieve it. It is both what I have been anticipating and dreading. The address I cannot help but note was written weakly. Likly a reflection of her constitution at the time of her sending it. My own writing is likely to be terrible for my eyes have gone blurry so long have I been reading the enclosed Journal. My mind for now is too unsettled for sleep, so here I write in my own Journal.

Did she succeed, or did she fail?

We cannot know and yet at the end of the diary, so helpfully scrawled are names and addresses she so cleverly copied from the letters she found in the messenger bag the gypsies were to carry. At the end of her entry there are four names and three very different addresses.

> A captain Sokolov- in Varna
> 
> A Lord Ruthervan, also Varna
> 
> A Dutchess Valeria in Austria
> 
> A Doctor Sharma, India

Who are these people and what roles do they play to Dracula, if he still walks the night?

The most frustrating is the lack of time, the last entries too chaotic to have a sense of what passed. I can estimate the travel of post but at any point it could have been delayed, or perhaps altered. It could be a trick by Dracula who has discovered her attempt or, even more insidious- a trick by Sophie herself. A puppet to Dracula speaking to me through the hypnotism I preformed on Mr. Harker, being long undead herself.

I do not think so, but much is uncertain, and minds cannot be made by assumption.

Sophie has gifted me much by way of her Journal, and much is gained by its pages, though many mysteries remain to me. The freshest of those within the last pages I have read. What was in the jar of amber, that ‘ambrosia’ which so beguiled Dracula? If Sophie was not 'undead' not how did she understand the language of the gypsies? How did she access Dracula’s memories? By her writings his reaction makes him seem 'disturbed' by this effect. If this was simply a result of their blood exchange would he not know it? Or were these 'memories' too plants? Illusions created to confuse her, as he created the ‘dream’ or rather the ‘false’ memory of Jonathan Harker and her mother regarding her birth, setting into her mind that she was not her father's daughter, usurping her insecurities at her very heart. I see him best in these pages, the cunning clever beast- his methods of twisting the young and innocent. His particular breed and tactics of manipulation.

Jonathan Harker is likely asleep upstairs at this very moment. His dutiful wife at his side their bags,, _packed_ , if by last we spoke nothing has changed. I envy them a little, but only abstractly, my passions have always been found in other places, passions of the flesh far more trivial matters, and those of the heart- well. There are things I have no desire to write down. 

Today it was all decided and though I should be sleeping to prepare myself, I am here, writing, so I may as well recount it all.

* * *

Mina had come upon me weary but smiling in my little dungeon still over the Diary, which rests now beside me as I write my own.

* * *

“You’re still reading it- I can’t imagine- I mean there must be so much terror in those pages.” 

“She deserves as much attention I think.” I answered earnestly, but said little else. I had not shared with Mina the journals contents, nor did I intend to unless it proved necessary. It had been addressed to me, given to me for my work and this privacy I would endeavour most greatly to protect. She had no one else but me in the end. I still remember her eyes shining from her fathers, so grey, ashen and without hope, but there had been quiet grim purpose too and in her journal too I am only affirmed in my thoughts of her. She was beyond shame. . . but I digress, Mina in my little dungeon asked:

“Do you think she did it?” I knew she desired most to believe Sophie had succeeded, but I was, not and am not so convinced.

“I do not know, what I do know is that it must not be left to chance.” I said and rose “Jonathan is well?” I asked, knowing she’d come to make some report or comment upon his condition as she so often did.

“His strength is returning to him, though I do not think it will ever be what it was.” She said, most astutely, for I too considered Jonathan to be marked, soul and body by the beast, the effects of its 'feeding'. “It is his memory that most concerns me.”

“It has worsened?” I had become aware of these little slips, and Mina’s face was sombre, she nodded.

“He no longer remembers her name.” She told me. “He’s begun writing his story, truly this time, for catharsis, I think you knew that-” I had, paper was no trifling thing to be wasted, though we had made concessions for Mr. Harker's condition. “I read what he wrote and. . . she’s not within them.”

“Not within them?” I asked hoping for clarification.

“I mean where she should be, in his travels, in the castle in his memory he’s written her out.” 

“Did you make comment to him about this?”

“Yes,” and here her voice caught with emotion, “And he asked me who I could be talking about!” Mina then asked aloud what I wondered myself. “Is this **his** doing?”

“Dracula’s? Perhaps.” Not enough information. Not then not now. I Turned to Mina. “Pack, if Jonathan is physically fit enough we will leave tomorrow.”

“Pack! Where are we to go?”

“Where ‘he’ would go of course.” I announced watching her amazed incredulous look. She was rather cute, as one might describe a 'pixie'. Would that Pixies be real and not _vampires_ , but I am getting off track. . .

“To England?”

“To Lucy.” Too easily the girls Christian name came to my lips. I felt having read the diary which was still warm in my hands, as if I knew the girl as well as a Catholic priest might know any of his flock from his confessional. That is: more than was appropriate.

“Miss Westenra?” Mina said not understanding, for how could she? She had not read what I had read, she did not know. I held up my hand before she could ask the very question I could see forming on her lips.

“Do not ask, only know that I am most certain that if he still walks he will go to Miss Westenra. As to Jonathan’s memories it is perhaps a blessing.”

“A Blessing?” Hissed Mina, “To forget his own daughter?”

“Where he has forgotten _we_ will remember.” Mina was both made strong by her sentimentality and weak. She turned away from me, her expression changing.

“I can hardly bear to read what he writes- how he’s twisted it.” She admitted.

“History is told by those who survive, not by those who fall. Let us ensure Sophie is the last.”

“And you think we can stop him?”

“I think we must try. For her, for Jonathan.” I watched her, wondering and waiting for her response. Would she turn away? Would her anger rise. Truly many in her position would do so. Instead she met my gaze and raised her chin a hard but determined look in her eye.

“Yes, we will try.” She said, firmly.

* * *

And so here I am, packed, ready to leave the place that I have found sanctuary in for so many years. What I wonder will I find on those distant shores? I have not written yet to Abraham, best I think to catch him off guard. If he suspected I was to arrive in London there would be no doubt a fit to be had.

Still I wonder. Has **_she_** joined the tormented undead? Did she succeed or did she fail? Sophie Harker has no more chapters to share. No more secrets that can reach me unless they are spoken from the lips of the dead. And those, I daresay cannot be trusted.

_-A. VanHelsing_

* * *

In the dark I travelled.

I’d dreamt often enough just of this. My fathers pathway into the dungeon and so I followed on my own two feet down and down into the abyss. 

I was not alone there the gypsis were working. Pulling up earth, digging and it up and putting it in long crates. Crate after crate they took, endlessly. This place was full of crates, most already full of voices and cramped crying bodies whispering over and over again _kill me, kill me kill me_.

Sometimes counting,

Sometimes singing. 

There voices made up a minute cacophony which drowned out to nothing but white noise. The gypsies did not see me. I felt strong enough but sometimes I swayed feeling the world churning between my feet causing me to stumble, barely catching myself on the wall as if the very ground beneath me swelled and turned.

Finally, holding high the flickering lamp light I saw it.

The tomb.

 _Dracula_.

The air tasted strangely of salt and iron, bitter on my tongue, another wave of vertigo forced me to pause and gather my breath. All my waiting, all my dreaming, I never fully expected to make it here. To be looking down upon him through the cracked seam where he slept. He looked older somehow, as if he hadn’t been feeding. How long had it been since he fed from me? My body prickled in remembrance of his kisses. On my breasts, between my thighs, and in the dozen other places he’d kissed me and killed me little by little so sweetly. 

And here I was to kill him. I had the weapons of my intentions. The hammer. The stake. The tomb was wide enough that I could place the tip there. I could drive it in.

I quaked as I did this, finding it difficult to breath. The earth seemed to be moving again, yet was not. Nausea quickened in me. I had to wait for it to pass.

And still he did not wake.

Still he did not open his eyes, enraged to snap the stake from my grasp to rise from his tomb as he rose for my father snarling and diving to finish me. To end it all.

For better or worse.

He did not wake. He lay as still as if he was already dead.

He lay as if he waited for me to kill him. 

I waited too. Why did I wait? 

It was what he deserved was it not?

Perhaps that was not the right question for I was certain it was.

Perhaps the question which could not be answered was- was it what I wanted?

Was it?

He did not wake still.

The world swayed again and the stake dropped from my grip. I could not after all. After all this I could not! I was losing balance, suddenly laying, rolling against a wall, something steady and hard beside me when I heard him. So quiet his voice, so sweetly just beside my ear.

“No, you can’t can you?” He asked, and I opened my eyes, expecting to see him rising. but no that was my fathers memory wasn't it? He was instead kneeling right beside me, as youthful as I’d ever seen him a tender look on his face. “Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you.” I laughed, for it was the most preposterous thing I'd ever heard from him but his careful expression did not change.

“You already have.”

“I know, but not now-” The world was swaying again and he caught me by my shoulders. “Its alright, you’ll get used to it.”

“U-used to what?” I was struck suddenly with the surreality. How had I gotten here? Where had I gotten the stake and mallet from? Suddenly everything seemed wrong, hadn't I just seen him old in the tomb? but that was my fathers memory of course, not my own. . . just like walking through the caves was not my memory, not really. He held me by my shoulders while the world continued to sway and churn.

“I had to know you see- if you’d follow through with it, if you’d kill me.”

“Oh god.” My nausia was growing. I tried to get away from him, shake free of his hands but they were all over me the room was spinning, only his voice was tangible, chasing me even as I twisted away.

“I made- mistakes Sophie, I didn't realize your condition.”

"Condition? what condition?" why didn't anything make sense? he touched me gingerly a smile on his lips that deepened my sense of sickness and dread. "I should have killed you." I said, the comment coming freely though I was surprised myself. He smiled only a little wider.

"Probably, but you didn't and its a rather good thing I think- with the baby to consider."

“The baby? What baby?”

* * *

I awoke in a sweat gasping, and rolling half to my side, I barely managed to reach the edge to wretch over into a pail that had been left there and luckily was not overturned by some miracle.

I was alone and very clearly inside the cabin of a ship a round port window shining pale light inside the room.

Beneath the sheets my belly swelled. 

_'Do you feel a heart_ beat?' Agatha had asked me. ' _yes,'_ I thought, uncertain at the time. Here there was no uncertainty, only it wasn't mine. Was my own still beating? Here now the uncertainty. As the ship bobbed, something clattered on the floor sliding off of a desk bolted to the floor with a thud and slid toward the bed.

It was wrapped as a gift was wrapped with a red bow. The item unmistakable.

Within was a book

A note fell out of the pages like a book marker. An ancient one I had crumpled up long ago throwing it beneath a bed in a distant and damp castle as a frightened girl.

It said:

_‘One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, very, let the strongest live and the weakest die.’_

On the first page was written in that same spindly scrawl:

> _Sophie Dracula's Diary_
> 
> _June 1st 1897_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I basically bomb posted it, but thats it folks.  
> I hope you'll tell me either way if you liked it or if it fell flat.  
> Its been a really fun journey, count this as my 'first' finished novella series. I guess just couldn't handle the suspense of drawing it out.  
> Hopefully some of you will stick around and enjoy more things I write.  
> you can check out my tumblr - sophieharkersdiary 
> 
> Feel free to keep in touch on there :)
> 
> **I posted this rather quickly, and only realized in hindsight a great error has been made!  
> I could not have finished this works without the hand full of beautiful, fantastic, amazing readers who left me their notes of encouragement on my chapters, from one word to passionate paragraphs which have given me warmth in the lulls of my writing and the urge to continue in spite of self doubt and uncertainty. I know it can be an effort to reach out, but know that it can make every difference, and in this case made every difference. This story would not have been what it was without you, and I daresay might not have 'been' anything at all.  
> Thank you! You are all so appreciated.


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